5 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. J 

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| UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. J 



Immortality of the Soul 

AND 

DESTIXY OF THE WICKED. 



BY THE 

Eey. N. L. EICE, D.D., 

President of Westminster College. 




PHILADELPHIA : 
PEESBYTEEIAN BOAED OF PUBLICATION, 
1334 CHESTNUT STREET. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by 

THE TRUSTEES OF THE 

PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 




PEEFACE. 



The following short treatise was commenced seve- 
ral years ago, at the earnest request of the Board 
of Publication. After the most of it had been writ- 
ten, the entire failure of the writer's health — com- 
pelling him to resign his pastoral charge in New 
York — made it necessary to lay it aside, and until 
a very recent period the idea of completing it was 
abandoned. At the renewed request of the Board 
it has now been finished, and is given to the public 
with the hope and prayer that, by the divine bless- 
ing, it may be of some use in the defence of the 
truth. 

The discussion of the subjects of the Immortality 

of the Soul and of the Destiny of the Wicked 

might embrace a very wide range of argument, in- 

3 



4 PEEFACE. 

eluding extended philosophical investigation and 
much learned criticism of the original languages 
of the Scriptures. But the truth of these, like that 
of all other fundamental doctrines of Christianity, 
can be satisfactorily demonstrated by a shorter and 
simpler process. We have written, not with the 
hope of silencing quibblers or of convincing the 
prejudiced, but of satisfying sincere inquirers after 
truth. We have aimed to make the discussion short, 
plain and convincing. How far we have succeeded 
we must leave each reader to determine; but we can 
say truly that, if the arguments employed are un- 
sound, we are wholly unable to detect their un- 
soundness. We offer to our readers evidences on 
which our own Christian hopes rest. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



CHAPTER I. 

STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION. 

rflWO great questions have, in all ages, 
excited the anxious inquiries of thinking 
minds. The first is the question of the in- 
troduction of sin and suffering into our world ; 
the second is the question of the continuance 
of evil, moral and natural. The number and 
variety of the theories adopted on these sub- 
jects sufficiently indicate the difficulties at- 
tending the investigation, and show how little 
satisfaction human reason alone can afford. 
It is to the second of these two great ques- 
tions that we propose now to devote a few 



8 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



pages, relying mainly, in the investigation, 
on the inspired Word, though not neglecting 
the aid of reason. 

That in this world all do sin and suffer, we 
know; but we inquire anxiously, What is to 
be the future of man? Will natural and moral 
evil always continue, or will both terminate 
either at death or at some future period? 
Those who regard man as only a material 
organism, whose conscious existence is termi- 
nated by death, of course have no difficulty 
respecting his eternal future. That which 
has no conscious existence can be neither 
holy nor unholy, neither happy nor unhappy. 
Amongst professing Christians some have 
held that at the resurrection, though not be- 
fore, all will be holy and happy. Such is the 
creed of Universalists. Others think there 
will be, at least to many, a period of suffering 
after death, but that ultimately all will be 
saved. Such is the belief of Eestorationists. 
But the great body of Christians of all ages 
have believed that after death the righteous 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 9 



"will be for ever holy and happy ; the wicked 
for ever unholy and unhappy. 

But we are now plausibly urged to abandon 
the long-established creed of the Church of 
Christ, and to embrace new doctrines respect- 
ing the nature of man and his future. It is 
contended that evil, natural and moral, must 
come to an end ; that in the government of 
the infinitely perfect Jehovah, it cannot be 
eternal. It is further contended that it will 
terminate, not, as Eestorationists and Univer- 
salists suppose, by all becoming holy and 
happy, but by the annihilation of the wicked. 
Those of the human race who die in unbe- 
lief, it is affirmed, will, as the just penalty of 
their sin, return to their original elements, 
and cease for ever to have a conscious exist- 
ence. This doctrine has practical bearings 
far more important than the mere question 
of the final doom of the wicked, for — 

1. It involves the doctrine that the human 
soul is mortal. One of the most plausible 
advocates of the annihilation of the wicked 



10 IMMOETALITY OF THE SOUL. 



says : " If it were true that immortality is 
an essential attribute of man, then indeed it 
must be admitted and maintained that a doc- 
trine of endless life in ceaseless woe is a doc- 
trine of the inspired Book." Other advo- 
cates of this doctrine contend earnestly that 
the human soul is not immortal. 

2. It involves the doctrine that the human 
soul is material, and, consequently, that man 
is nothing more than a material organism. 
We propose, in the progress of this discus- 
sion, to prove that Annihilationists do teach 
this doctrine. They cannot escape from it; 
for if the soul is pure spirit, it is not subject 
to decay or decomposition. 

3. Logically it involves the denial of the 
doctrine of man's free and accountable agency, 
and, consequently, the denial of the possibility 
of sin and holiness in man. For matter, be- 
ing governed by fixed laws, is incapable of 
voluntary action, and, of course, incapable 
of moral action. This is not an inference of 
ours. The two doctrines — materialism and 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 11 



human accountability — have never, so -far as 
we know, been associated for any length of 
time. 

The history of the sensational philosophy, 
which gained a wonderful popularity in France 
just before the Revolution, warns us of the 
inevitable tendencies of the doctrine of the 
materiality of the soul. The leading phil- 
osophers of that period regarded man as a 
mere material organism, but for a time they 
shrank from carrying out the doctrine to its 
logical results. Men, however, are far more 
likely to carry out false principles, even to 
the most revolting results, than to abandon 
them and return to the truth. The time soon 
came when the philosophers of France, hav- 
ing asserted the materiality of the soul, de- 
nied its free agency, and made virtue and vice 
synonymous with pleasure and pain. 'The 
crowning piece/ says the learned Morell, 6 in 
which the ultimate results of the whole sys- 
tem are concentrated, was presented to the 
world by the Baron d'Holbach in his " Sys- 



12 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



tenae de la Nature," a work in which materi- 
alism, fatalism and avowed atheism all com- 
bine to form a view of human nature which 
even Voltaire pronounced to be illogical in 
its deductions, absurd in its physics and abom- 
inable in its morality/ " — Hist of Mod. Phi- 
los., v. i., p. 161. 

4. Logically it also involves the rejection 
of a vicarious atonement. The doctrine, in- 
consistent with itself, is, that man is mortal 
by nature; that he would, therefore, die by 
the course of nature, and death would be the 
endurance of the entire penalty of his sin, if 
we suppose him capable of sinning. If, after 
this, God were pleased to raise him from his 
dust to a new life, only the exertion of infin- 
ite power would be necessary • and there ap- 
pears to be no reason why the incarnation 
and death of Christ should be necessary in 
order to the putting forth of such power. 
We are not surprised, therefore, to find one 
of the most plausible advocates of annihila- 
tionism rejecting and contending against the 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 13 



doctrine. He says : " In two different ways 
is the actual pardon of sin denied — 1st. AVhere 
sin is said to be punished in the person of the 
transgressor. 2d. Where it is said to be pun- 
ished in the person of the Redeemer." Again : 
" We remark, then, that it [the doctrine that 
sin was punished in the Redeemer] seems to 
be implied and properly to inhere in several 
of the theodicies of eternal suffering." And 
again : " That theory of the atonement which 
makes the sufferings of Christ a satisfaction 
to the divine justice is commonly found in 
closest connection with the notion of sin as 
infinite guilt." * We quote this language, 
not now for the purpose of refuting it, but 
simply to show that according to this writer 
the two doctrines — the eternal punishment of 
the wicked and the vicarious atonement of 
Christ — stand or fall together. 

5. If the preceding positions are true, it 
requires no long argument to prove that 
the prevalence of the doctrines of annihila- 
* "Debt and Grace," pp. 392-397. 



14 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



tionists must result in the overthrow of 
morals. In making man a mere material 
organism and denying his free agency, they 
furnish the very best apology for all wicked- 
ness ; and in making the only penalty of 
sin the privation of conscious existence, they 
take away one of the most powerful motives 
by which it is restrained. It may be said 
that men shrink from annihilation more than 
from eternal suffering. But, in the first place, 
the zeal with which not a few in our day are 
seeking to prove, scientifically, that man is 
only a material and perishing organism, dis- 
proves the assertion. In the second place, it 
is an instructive fact that it was when the 
French infidels of the Revolution succeeded 
in convincing the masses of the people that 
death is an eternal sleep, that wickedness in 
every form abounded, and France became a 
pandemonium. 

If, then, we have not misunderstood the 
consequences which legitimately flow from 
the doctrine of annihilationism ; it is evidently 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 15 



of sufficient importance to demand careful 
investigation. Should we embrace this doc- 
trine, we do not merely abandon one of the 
doctrines of our present creed. We receive 
a doctrine which will, if we are consistent, 
compel us to reject other doctrines hitherto 
regarded as fundamental to the Christian sys- 
tem ; nor is it easy to say where we should 
find a solid resting-place for our faith. 

It is, then, apparent that the discussion of 
the doctrine of the annihilation of the wicked 
involves the inquiry into the nature as w T ell 
as the destiny of man. The following ques- 
tions will cover the entire ground of the dis- 
cussion, and will conduct us without confu- 
sion through the several steps necessary to a 
safe and satisfactory conclusion : 

I. What do the Scriptures teach us re- 
specting the nature of the soul ? 

II. How far do the known properties of 
the soul confirm the obvious meaning of the 
Scriptures respecting its nature? 

III. What do the Scriptures teach us re- 
2 



16 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



specting the state of the soul between death 
and the resurrection? 

IV. What do the Scriptures teach respect- 
ing the eternal state of the wicked? 



CHAPTER II. 



PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS. 

BEFORE entering upon the discussion of 
these questions, there are some prelimi- 
nary considerations which claim attention, 
either as affording strong presumptive ev- 
idence against the annihilationist creed, or 
as removing difficulties and preparing the 
way for a satisfactory discussion of the whole 
subject. 

1. It is important to explain the sense in 
which the word immortality is employed in 
relation to the soul. In the New Testament 
there are two words translated immortality — 
aphtharsia and athanasia. In the highest 
sense these words are applied to God. In 
1 Tim. i. 7 we read : " Now unto the Kino; 
eternal, immortal (aphtharto), invisible, the 

17 



18 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



only wise God, be honor and glory for ever/ 5 
In 1 Tim. vi. 16 we read: " Who only hath 
immortality (athanasian), dwelling in light 
which no man can approach unto." Now, it 
is manifest that immortality cannot belong to 
any finite being in the sense in which it be- 
longs to God. Of him only can it be said 
that he " hath life in himself." The immor- 
tality of a creature must of necessity be de- 
rived and dependent. 

These words are used with reference to the 
bodies of the saints as they will be raised 
from the dead. In 1 Cor. xv. 53 it is writ- 
ten : " For this corruptible must put on in- 
corruption (aphtharsian), and this mortal must 
put on immortality (athanasian)." Their bod- 
ies will be so changed and refined as to be no 
more subject to decay and death. The word 
aphtharsia is also employed to express the 
happy immortality of the righteous. Eon], 
ii. 7. The English word immortality is con- 
stantly used to signify the incorruptibility of 
the soul, in consequence of which it does not 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 19 



die with the body, but will live for ever. 
Webster defines it to be " the quality of be- 
ing immortal ; exemption from death and 
annihilation; life destined to endure with- 
out end." In this sense we use the word 
when we affirm that the soul is immortal. 
We do not mean that it possesses an immor- 
tality independent of its Creator, or that he 
could not, if he chose, annihilate it, but that, 
as he designed it to live for ever, he imparted 
to it a nature suited to its destiny. Whether 
the word immortality is applied to the soul in 
this sense in the Scriptures or not, the doc- 
trine which it expresses we hope to prove is 
abundantly taught there. 

2. That the Scriptures do teach this doc- 
trine is made extremely probable — to use no 
stronger language — by the fact that the church 
of Christ in all ages and countries has so 
understood them. Hudson, one of the most 
plausible advocates of the soul's mortality, 
asserts that the early history of the opposite 

doctrine " is evidently Platonic," and he adds : 
2* 



20 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



" This view was first tolerated in the Chris- 
tian church in the person of a remarkable 
man in the fifth century, Synesius." But, in 
the first place, the doctrine of Plato, as stated 
by this author himself, is essentially different 
from that which we advocate. He says : 
"P]ato himself regarded the soul as not only 
immortal, but a divine essence, and, because 
divine, it was pre-existent and eternal." But 
we who contend for the doctrine of the soul's 
immortality do not regard it as a divine es- 
sence, or as pre-existent, but as simply created 
by God with a nature not subject to decay and 
death. Our doctrine, therefore, is not of 
Platonic origin. Besides, this same author 
informs us that Justin Martyr, in his " Ex- 
hortation to the Greeks," mentions the doc- 
trine "of the soul's immortality" among the 
truths " held in common by the philosophers 
and the Christians/' * Xow, Justin Martyr 
lived in the second century of the Christian 
era, and no man had better opportunities of 
* "Debt and Grace," p. 313. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



21 



knowing the faith of Christians at that period; 
It cannot be true, then, that the doctrine of 
the soul's immortality was first tolerated in 
the Christian church in the fifth century. 
The truth is, that the doctrines of the soul's 
mortality and of the annihilation of the 
wicked never gained a footing in the primi- 
tive church. 

We have a very important testimony re- 
specting the belief of the church in all its 
branches, for several centuries past, which 
relieves us from the necessity of adducing 
other proofs. One of the ablest annihila- 
tionists says : " From the various schools of 
ecclesiastical tuition a reply [i. <?., to the ques- 
tion, Uliat is man ?~\ has come forth, the sub- 
stance of which may be thus condensed : 
- Man is an immortal being J — mortal as to 
his body, but immortal in his soul." And 
after stating the doctrine of the future des- 
tiny of the wicked, he says : " From the press 
and from the pulpit the reply has for centu- 
ries gone forth. In every country in Chris- 



22 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



tendom, and in every city and hamlet, this 
teaching is heard." * We are far from claim- 
ing infallibility for the church in her interpre- 
tations of the Scriptures, but we are as far 
from regarding it as even remotely probable 
that on a subject of so great importance — a 
subject of which, confessedly, the Scriptures 
treat abundantly and plainly — the whole 
church has been given up for centuries to be- 
lieve a lie. We are constrained to ask, What 
strange and all-pervading delusion has come 
over the minds of all the students of God's 
word — embracing great multitudes of the 
eminently wise and good — that for centuries 
past they should have so grossly misin- 
terpreted its plain language, all, too, under- 
standing it in the same way? Within these 
centuries the Scriptures have been in the 
hands of the people, and have been studied 
as never before by learned laymen — inde- 
pendent thinkers — as well as by learned min- 
isters, and during no preceding period have 
* " Question of Ages," p. 381. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 23 



the minds of good men been so free from the 
perverting influence of false philosophy. The 
Reformation expelled Plato and Aristotle from 
the church, but the doctrine of the soul's im- 
mortality remained. The Baconian philoso- 
phy gave a new direction to philosophical in- 
quiry, but still this doctrine has held its place 
in the creed of almost the whole of Christen- 
dom. How shall we account for this if the 
doctrine is false and injurious? Is it more 
probable that the whole church should have 
so long and so strangely erred, or that the 
few men who now assail the long-established 
faith have themselves misinterpreted the in- 
spired record ? "We leave the candid reader 
to answer. But surely we are justified in de- 
manding of those who make pretensions so 
extraordinary, arguments the most conclusive, 
before we change our faith. 

3. On close inspection we discover in the 
creed we are invited to embrace some incon- 
sistencies which shake our confidence in it. 
The truth is always consistent with itself, and 



24 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL, 



the human understanding refuses to receive 
contradictions as inspired truths. 

1st. The annihilationist creed ascribes the 
same qualities to two substances essentially 
different in their nature. Annihilationists 
hold that the soul is a material substance, 
and that God is a spirit, and so are angels ; 
and yet they ascribe the same qualities or 
properties to these two essentially different 
substances. We may be charged with mis- 
representation when we charge them with 
holding that the soul is matter. Let us, 
therefore, adduce the evidence upon which 
the statement is founded. Hudson, shrinking 
from the avowal of gross materialism, yet ad- 
mits " the prevalence of a materialist philoso- 
phy which has frequently attended the doc- 
trine we (annihilationists) maintain;" and he 
insists, in the behalf of pious materialists, 
"that speculative materialism is not to be for 
itself condemned." * Now, between the doc- 
trine that the soul is spirit, and the doctrine 
* "Debt and Grace," pp. 2-iS, 246. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 25 



that the soul is matter, there is fundamental 
difference. The one view or the other is a 
very grave error. Why. then, we may reas- 
onably inquire, has a materialist philosophy 
so frequently attended the doctrine of annihi- 
lationisrn, unless there is some decided affinity 
between the two? Evidently the advocates 
of this doctrine have felt that the spiritual 
nature of the soul could never be made to 
harmonize with it. And why, we may further 
ask, is not speculative materialism to be for 
itself condemned if it be an error? Is not 
all error, especially on a subject so vital, in- 
jurious? But our author himself, wdiilst ap- 
parently contending that the soul is " a spir- 
itual substance," adopts a theory which is 
substantially and really materialistic. His 
theory is that " which regards the soul as an 
entity, not destroyed by the death of the body, 
however dependent it may be on an embodi- 
ment for the purposes of active existence." * 
No materialist imagines that death destroys 
* "Debt and Grace," p. 250. 



26 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



either body or soul, as an entity. If con- 
scious existence is destroyed, it avails nothing 
to say that as an entity the soul still exists. 
If it does not exist as an intelligent, active 
being, it is virtually destroyed. To speak of 
its condition as " a repose " — " not a state of 
thinking, perhaps, on the other hand, not of 
unconsciousness, but of momentary all-con- 
sciousness" * — is to use words without mean- 
ing. It is the attempt to imagine a state un- 
known alike to philosophy and to the Scrip- 
tures. 

Another writer of the same school, shrink- 
ing from the avowal of materialism, admits 
that the soul is a substance, yet denies that it 
is either matter or spirit. In one place he 
speaks of "the vital, vigorous substance, the 
immaterial soul of man," as created by God. 
In another place, replying to the argument 
that the soul is immaterial, and therefore im- 
mortal, he says : " The argument is invalid 
and unreasonable, and its only supposable 
* " Debt and Grace," p, 261. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 27 



force arises from a silent assumption that be- 
cause the soul of man is not matter, therefore 
it is spirit. But this assumption is not war- 
ranted." * Now, since the soul is confessedly 
a substance, it must be either matter or spirit, 
unless there is a third substance different in 
nature from both of these. There is no third 
substance known to us, and, therefore, if the 
soul is not spirit, we must regard it as matter. 
And notwithstanding the occasional use of 
language which might have another meaning, 
this is evidently the view of our author, for 
he contends that man is wholly of earthly 
origin. The sentence pronounced upon Adam 
he expounds thus : " In the sweat of thy face 
shalt thou eat bread, till thou return into 
the earth ; for out of it (mimenha — out of 
that sort of origin) wast thou taken : for 
dust (gah-phar, elemental atoms) thou art, 
and unto dust (elemental atoms) shalt thou re- 
turn." He adds by way of comment : u In this 
sentence pronounced on the man, the fact of 
* " Quest, of Ages," pp. 5, 27. 

3 



28 immortaIjIty of the soul. 



his personal origin out of the earth is embod- 
ied." * Now, dust is matter; and he who con- 
tends that man, as a person, is formed of dust, 
and at death returns to dust, is a materialist. 

Another writer of the same creed reasons 
about the immateriality of the soul thus : 
" Where is the proof that the soul is im- 
material? It certainly is not drawn from 
nature, for all nature is material ; it is not 
drawn from reason, for reason cannot com- 
prehend the existence of immateriality; it 
cannot be drawn from revelation, for that 
expressly declares that man is dust and the 
mind carnal." f Can there be grosser ma- 
terialism or more absurd reasoning than this? 
Yet the writer, as if, under the silent protest 
of his own soul, shrinking from his own doc- 
trine, says : " We do not mean to be under- 
stood that the mind is material, but we do 
claim that all vital and mental phenomena 
result from material causes." Then take 

* " Quest, of Ages/' p. 34. 

f "Mortal or Immortal," p. 25. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 29 



away the material causes, and all vital and 
mental phenomena must cease. Where, then, 
is the soul, and what is it ? He has ex- 
plained his meaning in replying to the 
argument for the immateriality of the soul 
founded in Eccles. xii. 7. The word trans- 
lated spirit, he contends, means breath, and 
he reasons thus : " Is, then, this breath of life 
the spirit which God has given to man ? We 
have no record of any other. But this breath 
of life, as we have seen, is common to ail 
living things," * etc. The soul of man, then, 
is only his breath, and just such souls have 
all living things ! There can be no grosser 
materialism than this. 

Now, according to the creed of these 
writers, God is a spirit, and the soul of man 
is matter. What are the properties of spirit 
as they appear in the divine nature ? They 
are intelligence, voluntary agency and moral 
character. God is an infinitely intelligent 
Being, he is infinitely free in his choices 

* " Mortal or Immortal," p. 40. 



30 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



and acts, and he is infinitely holy. These 
are the distinguishing properties of spirit. 
But the soul of man, though finite, is an 
intelligent being, free in its choices and acts, 
and possesses moral character. Possessing, 
therefore, the distinguishing properties of 
spirit, it is spirit. There is no greater ab- 
surdity than to ascribe the same properties 
to two substances essentially different in na- 
ture. This absurdity is chargeable upon the 
doctrine we are controverting. The ancient 
Sadducees, w T ho denied the immortality of 
the soul, were consistent enough to deny the 
existence of spirits. " For the Sadducees say 
that there is no resurrection, neither angel nor 
spirit." * But the annihilationists are incon- 
sistent enough to maintain the materiality and 
mortality of the soul, and yet to admit the 
existence of spirits. 

2d. The creed of the annihilationists is ab- 
surd and contradictory, because, according to 
it, the righteous, though they are justified, 

* Acts xxiii. 8. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 31 

suffer the full penalty of sin once, the wicked, 
twice. They insist with great earnestness that 
" the revealed penalty of human sin, and, in 
this, the revealed destiny of man, as a sinner, 
is found in the sentence pronounced upon 
Adam,^ which, as interpreted by one of them, 
means that man was formed of the dust — 
elemental atoms — and is to return to dust 
or elemental atoms. " The first man," says 
he, "is out of the earth, and the final destiny 
of man, as man and a sinner, is to return 
unto the earth, and to become as though he 
had not been. The destiny of man, as de- 
nounced of God in the garden of Eden, is 
continuously shown in the concurrent teach- 
ing of the inspired Book."* Now, if it be 
true that the soul is material and dies with 
the body, every human being does suffer this 
entire penalty at death, for then the entire 
person returns to dust or elemental atoms. 
It is true that the writer just quoted at- 
tempts to escape the difficulty by saying that, 

* "Quest, of Ages/' pp. 34, 135. 

3* 



32 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



since Jesus died and rose again, " the saints 
do not in reality die, but, before that, the 
saints died and were held captive by death."* 
But this assertion, if it were true, does not 
remove the difficulty; for it would still be 
true that the saints who died before the 
death and resurrection of Christ did suffer 
the full penalty of sin; for their souls, as we 
are told, were " held by the chords of death 
insensible and inert." But other annihila- 
tionists do not accept this theory, that since 
the resurrection of Christ the saints do not 
die. One of them states his belief thus : 
u That man has no inherent immortal prin- 
ciple in his nature. That consequently no 
part of him remains in a separate conscious 
state in death, but that the whole man lies 
in unconsciousness till called to new life by 
the resurrection." f Accordingly, he labors to 
prove that all those passages which seem to 
teach that the saints, between the time of 

* Quest, of Ages," p. 107. 

f Preface to " Mortal or Immortal." 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 33 



their death and that of the resurrection, en- 
joy a happy existence, mean something else. 
Hudson reasons in the same way. 

The penalty of sin, then, according to an- 
nihilationists, is death — that is, the return of 
man, soul and body, to the earth from which 
he was taken. If this is the penalty, every 
one who dies suffers it. Eat the saints die 
and return to dust. Therefore the saints en- 
dure the full penalty of sin. This conclusion 
is not affected by the fact, if it were true, that 
new beings will, at some distant period, be 
created out of the same "elemental atoms," 
for in no possible sense could they be the 
same persons who died. And if this were 
possible, still it would be true that they did 
suffer the whole penalty when they returned 
to dust. Hudson sees and vainly attempts 
to escape the difficulty respecting identity. 
He says : " This view p. e. 9 that the soul dies 
with the body] makes the identity of man's 
present and future being inexplicable, if not 
impossible." He would meet the difficulty 



34 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



by the theory, already noticed, that the soul 
continues as "an entity," though without 
active existence. His view of the penalty, 
consequently, is stated thus : " In the doc- 
trine of death which we maintain, this view 
of man's nature would lead us to say that 
the first and second death are the first and 
second installments of the debt incurred by 
sin, the execution of the sentence being 
divided in such sort that those who escape 
the second death are in the New Testament 
spoken of not as properly dead, but as fallen 
asleep."* But, in the first place, this view 
is absurd. The soul is either matter or spirit. 
If it is matter, death destroys it as completely 
as it destroys the body. If it is spirit, death 
simply dissolves the tie that binds soul and 
body together, and it passes into another 
state of conscious existence. A spirit must 
possess the properties of spirit, and there- 
fore must be active, thinking, feeling, acting. 
To talk of the disembodied soul as " lost in 
* "Debt and Grace," pp. 247, 250. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 35 



an intuition of its past history, with no pro- 
cess of thinking and with no note of time," 
is to talk nonsense.* Neither philosophy nor 
revelation knows anything of such a state. 

Secondly, If we were to admit the truth 
of these wild conjectures, and that the penalty 
of sin is divided into "two installments," 
still, the righteous, as well as the wicked, 
would pay the first installment. Now, the 
Scriptures teach us that believers in Christ 
are fully justified, and that to them " there is 
no condemnation." f They suffer no part of 
the penalty of sin. They are, indeed, sub- 
ject to natural death, but in the case of 
believers the plan of redemption has con- 
verted death into a rich blessing, since it 
introduces them into the blissful presence of 
God. Paul, therefore, in enumerating the 
believer's blessings, includes death among 
them. J But according to the doctrine of 
annihilationists, death deprives the righteous, 

* "Debt and Grace/' p. 261. f Eoin. viii. 1. 
J 1 Cor. iii. 22. 



36 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



as well as the wicked, of conscious existence ; 
it converts them into " elemental atoms/' or 
dust. They, therefore, suffer just what was 
denounced against Adam as the penalty of 
sin. So that we have, in the case of the 
righteous, the same persons fully justified, 
yet enduring the penalty of sin. This is 
contradiction. 

But as for the wicked, they endure the 
penalty ticice, which is absurd, and would be 
unjust. For the advocates of annihilation 
tell us that after having: died once — having 
returned to dust — they are to be raised from 
the dead that they may again be annihilated, 
or die a second time ! Hudson saw the diffi- 
culty, and it had its influence in inducing 
him to adopt the absurd theory of the soul's 
continued existence as "an entity." Says 
he, " If the human soul or spirit is not an 
immaterial substance, but perishes with the 
body, then the wicked will wholly die twice, 
and the penalty of the law will appear to 
be executed a second time. This difficulty, 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 37 



with another to be named hereafter, has led 
many to deny that the 6 resurrection of the 
unjust' signifies their being made alive." 
To such absurdities are men driven who 
abandon the obvious teachings of God's 
word.* 

Another advocate of annihilation seeks to 
remove this difficulty. "Adam," he says, 
" has suffered the penalty of his first trans- 
gression, death. Death temporal — or rather, 
we should say, death temporary — is entailed 
in consequence upon all our race. And had 
not the plan of salvation immediately super- 
vened upon the fall, this would have been 
the end of Adam and his posterity, for we 
have already seen that death is a state of 
non-existence, and the only avenue there is 
from that land of dark unconsciousness back 
to life is through the resurrection, which is 
effected by Christ." But we are to answer, 
he tells us, " for our personal acts and trans- 
gressions." For this purpose we are all to 
* "Debt and Grace," p. 247. 



38 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



have a future life. And if, then, there are 
found remaining against us sins unrepented 
of and unforgiven, what will be our sen- 
tence? Answer: The same fearful sentence 
which has everywhere, from first to last, been 
pronounced against sin, " The soul that sin- 
neth it shall die." * But how is this ? 
These writers do most earnestly insist that 
the penalty of sin is death — that is, the return 
of man, body and soul, to dust. If this is 
the penalty of sin, then, when a man dies he 
fully endures the penalty due to all his sin. 
How is it, then, that he is to be created over 
again, that he may again endure the same 
sentence? It is useless to tell us that the 
first death is entailed, since we are assured 
that it is the precise penalty of sin. There 
is no escape from the conclusion that, accord- 
ing to the annihilationist creed, the wicked 
are to suffer the penalty of the law twice. 
We need no stronger evidence that it is 
untrue. 

* " Mortal or Immortal," pp. 104, 105. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 39 



But let us look at this point again; As 
already shown, these writers tell us that the 
penalty of sin is death; and yet some of them 
seem to teach that death or annihilation is a 
merciful arrangement, not an infliction of the 
penalty. One of them, giving his creed, states 
the matter thus: "That the wicked will be 
punished in a future state, that they will be 
rewarded every man according to his deeds, 
but that they will receive this punishment 
at the hands of a God whose mercy is co- 
equal with his justice, and who will suffer 
them to go back to their original elements 
and cease from existence, as entitled to no 
name nor place in all the universe of God." * 
Now, according to the view here given, the 
penalty of sin is to be endured in the future 
state, and after the wicked shall have fully 
endured that penalty, God, who is as merci- 
ful as he is just, will permit them to become 
extinct. Annihilation, therefore, is the mer- 
ciful termination of their sufferings, not the 
* Pref. to "Mortal or Immortal." 

4 



40 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



punishment of their sins. X ow, both of these 
views cannot be true. If the annihilation of 
the wicked is " the fearful sentence which has 
everywhere, from first to last, been pronounced 
against sin," it cannot be a merciful permis- 
sion to the wicked to return to the original 
elements out of which they were formed. 

But, after all, can it be true that death or 
annihilation is, in any sense, the penalty of 
sin? Let us examine. In the first place, 
we are assured that man was created mortal, 
but had the offer of immortality on certain 
conditions. " Though not immortal, he was 
capable of living to perpetuity, and this con- 
stitutional life, possessed as the gift of his 
Creator, he held unsubject to death on the 
sole condition of non-disobedience to the 
prohibitory command which his Creator had 
imposed." * Man, then, was mortal, but on 
certain conditions he might have lived for 
ever. He chose not to comply with those 
conditions, and consequently, being mortal, he 
* " Quest, of Ages," p. 32. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 41 



must perish, in the natural course of things. 
The gospel makes to him another offer of 
immortality on other conditions. If he de- 
clines the offer, being mortal, he dies. " The 
gospel offers him everything, and invites — 
with all the earnestness of divine love it 
urges — his acceptance. But it obtrudes upon 
him nothing." * Now, according to this view, 
death is not a penalty at all. Man was 
mortal. He had the offer of immortality, 
but did not accept. He therefore continued 
to be mortal, and must die without the ne- 
cessity of any divine infliction. The gospel, 
again, offers immortality. Some accept and 
will live for ever. Others either never hear 
the offer or decline it, and therefore, being 
mortal, they die, in the course of nature. 
If they should be newly created or raised 
from the dead, they must be raised mortal 
or immortal. If they are raised mortal, they 
will again die, in course of nature. If im- 
mortal, they will not be annihilated. Anni-* 
* " Debt and Grace," p. 7. 



42 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



hilation, therefore, instead of being the inflic- 
tion of' a " fearful sentence," must be a mere 
natural result. True, death might be has- 
tened by divine judgments, but in this world 
the wicked often live as long as or longer 
than the righteous. The truth is, this creed 
is a bundle of contradictions and absurdities. 
The different parts of it cannot be reconciled 
with each other. It rests on neither a philo- 
sophical nor a scriptural foundation. It can- 
not be true. 

4. The modes of defending their creed 
adopted by annihilationists can lead only to er- 
ror. They are modes by which any doctrine 
of the Scriptures might be successfully as- 
sailed, or any error successfully defended. We 
now call attention to two of their peculiarities. 

1st. They make a great deal out of the fact 
that certain terms and phrases now employed 
by believers in the soul's immortality are not 
found in the Scriptures. One of them states 
the number of times the words translated 
soul and spirit are found in the Bible, and 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 43 



glories in "the stupendous fact" that -in no 
instance is it called an immortal or a deathless 
soul. 

The whole force of this vaunted argument 
consists in the fact that the words immortal 
and deathless are not found in the Bible con- 
nected with the words soul and spirit. Xow, 
suppose we should urge, as a triumphant 
refutation of the doctrine of the mortality of 
the soul, another " stupendous fact" which this 
dashing writer seems to have overlooked, viz. : 
that in all those hundreds of instances in 
which the words soul and spirit occur, the 
soul is never once denominated mortal, nor 
the spirit called dying. If the absence of the 
words immortal and deathless proves that the 
soul is not immortal, does not the absence of 
the words mortal and dying prove as clearly 
that it is not mortal ? This mode of arguing 
would prove that the soul is neither mortal 
nor immortal. A wise man never uses argu- 
ments against the creed of others which are 

fatal to his own. 
4* 



44 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



But if, as this writer affirms, the silence 
of the Scriptures is significant, may not its 
meaning be the reverse of what he supposes ? 
It is a fact that, in the days of Christ and 
his apostles, the doctrine of the immortality 
of the soul prevailed amongst the Jews, and 
also amongst the Gentiles, The Saddncees 
denied it, but the Pharisees, who were much 
more numerous, held it, If, then, this doc- 
trine is erroneous and injurious, should we 
not expect to find, in some of the numerous 
instances in which the words soul and spirit 
occur in the Xew Testament, the soul denomi- 
nated mortal and the spirit dying? "Would 
they allow such an error, so prevalent, to go 
unrebuked ? If, then, this silence is signifi- 
cant, it bears hardly on the doctrine of the 
annihilationists. 

But all such reasoning is shallow and de- 
ceptive. It confounds two totally different 
things, viz. : the silence of the Scriptures in 
relation to the doctrine of the soul's immor- 
tality, and the absence from the Scriptures 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 45 



of certain words and phrases now employed 
to express this doctrine. Why may it not be 
taught by means of other words and phrases ? 
Suppose the inspired account of the creation 
of man should prove that his soul is spirit, 
not matter. Suppose the Scriptures should 
teach that at death the soul passes into an- 
other state of conscious existence, that the 
righteous are happy in the presence of God, 
the wicked unhappy in outer darkness. Sup- 
pose we learn from the inspired volume that 
after the resurrection the wicked will suffer 
for ever. Would not the doctrine of the 
immortality of the soul be as clearly taught 
in these ways as if the words immortal and 
deathless were used? Who does not know 
that in all ages theological writers have 
adopted words and phrases to express Scrip- 
ture truths, which words and phrases are not 
in the Scriptures? The word trinity, the 
phrases total depravity, perseverance of the 
saints, and the like, are not found in the 
Scriptures; but does it follow that the doc- 



46 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



trines thus expressed are not there? The 
annihilationists themselves make free use of 
terms which are not scriptural. The advo- 
cates of truth never find it necessary to resort 
to this shallow mode of argumentation. 

2d. Whilst asserting with great positiveness 
the meaning of those passages of Scripture 
which, as they think, favor their views, the 
annihilationists labor to make the meaning 
of those passages which teach the opposite 
doctrines, perfectly doubtful. For example, 
the sentence pronounced on Adam, it is very 
positively asserted, teaches that the whole 
man, body and soul, dies. But when Solo- 
mon, speaking of death, says, "Then shall 
the dust return to the earth as it was, and 
the spirit shall return unto God who gave 
it," they labor only to render the meaning 
of his language perfectly doubtful. One of 
them replies to the argument from this pas- 
sage thus : " This argument is based on the 
assumption that the word translated 6 spirit 9 
in the above passage is used as a substantive 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



47 



noun, and means the soul of man. But this 
is not self-evident, and may not be the mean- 
ing at all. The original word, ruah, may 
possibly mean the breath of man, as in Gen. 
vi. 17 and several other places. We do not 
say that, in this instance, it means the breath. 
It may be used to signify the motion of the 
soul in passing away, and passing into the 
custody of God. . . . The doctrine deducible 
from the text may be this." * This passage 
is one of the most important in the Bible, 
as explaining the sentence pronounced upon 
man after the fall. This very critical writer 
is entirely positive in giving to the language 
of that sentence an interpretation widely dif- 
ferent from that of all respectable critics and 
commentators; but when he comes to an in- 
spired explanation of it, he can only discover 
that it may mean this, or it may mean that, 
and the doctrine it teaches may be so and so ! 
What can such criticism do but mislead ? 
The language of Solomon has a meaning, and 
* " Quest, of Ages," p. 18. 



48 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



it is the business of those who undertake to 
expound it, to ascertain what it does mean, 
not what it may mean. 

Again, when our Lord bade his disciples 
" fear him which is able to destroy both soul 
and body in hell," the advocates of annihila- 
tion are positive as to his meaning : the word 
destroy of course means annihilate. But when 
he says to the penitent thief, " Verily I say 
unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in 
Paradise," they tell us his language may 
mean either of several things. One author 
says: "The meaning may be, I say unto 
thee, Even this day, when it all seems so 
unlikely, thou shalt be with me in Paradise, 
when I enter my kingdom, or the term Para- 
dise may denote the state of the saints in the 
underworld." * Another writer of the same 
creed proposes three interpretations of our 
Lord's language, and gravely says : " There 
is a degree of plausibility in each. The reader 
can adopt that which seems to him most satis- 
*"Debt and Grace," p. 257. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 49 



factory, but if he should have the curiosity 
to inquire which the writer was inclined to 
regard as the truthful one, he would be told 
the first." * In connection with this passage, 
the writer makes a truly characteristic re- 
mark. He says: "We would just as soon 
suggest several explanations of the same scrip- 
ture as we would several methods of solving 
the same problem, provided they all equally 
get the answer." f Precisely so. A certain 
" answer" is desired, and the question is, not 
what the language of particular texts really 
means, but how they may be interpreted so 
as to get the desired answer ! 

Again, in noticing the argument from 2 
Cor. v. 8 and Phil. i. 21-23, Hudson says: 
" The phrase, 6 to be absent from the body/ 
may therefore denote, not the happiness of 
a disembodied state, but a release from the 
suffering and dying body, either to 1 sleep in 
Jesus/ or to be present with Christ in the 
glorified body of the resurrection. . . . When 

* " Mortal or Immortal," p. 57. f Ibid., p. 51. 



50 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



he then adds, i To live is Christ, and to die is 
gain/ he may signify either the gain to the 
cause of Christ by the martyrdom which in 
his prison he awaited, or his own greater 
reward, as a martyr, in the resurrection. . . . 
And as in the other passage, so here, the 
departure to be with Christ may denote either 
the repose of the saints in the bosom of Christ, 
or the full union with him in the resurrection 
which Paul so earnestly desires." * 

These writers seem perfectly satisfied when 
they have said, respecting any passage of 
Scripture that stands in their way, that it 
may mean something widely different from 
the meaning almost universally attributed to 
it. This is the abuse of criticism. There 
is no important word that has not several 
meanings; and therefore there are few texts 
of Scripture to which several different inter- 
pretations may not be plausibly given. It is 
the business of interpreters, not to try to 
evade the plain meaning of Scripture language 
* " Debt and Grace," p. 256. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 51 



by saying, it may mean something different, 
but to ascertain what it does in fact mean. 
Whilst there are passages that are obscure, 
concerning the meaning of which there may 
be doubt, those just noticed are not of this 
class. The language is plain, and interpret- 
ers are very generally agreed respecting the 
true interpretation of them. Let us take not 
a part, but all that Scriptures say of the soul 
of man and his destiny, and let it be our 
aim to ascertain the true meaning of each 
class of texts, and the doctrine taught by the 
whole, not to discover what interpretation 
may be forced upon them. Thus, and only 
thus, can we hope to arrive at the truth. 

5 



CHAPTER III. 



THE CREATION OF MAN. 

TTTE are now prepared to inquire, To what 
' ' conclusion does the inspired account of 
the creation of mam conduct us respecting the 
nature of the soul? The account, though 
very brief, does not leave us in the dark on 
this point. 

In the first place, we notice a very striking 
difference between the history of the creation 
of the different orders of animals and that 
of the creation of man. Concerning certain 
classes of animals, God said, " Let the waters 
bring forth abundantly the moving creature 
that hath life." Concerning other classes, 
he said, " Let the earth bring forth the liv- 
ing creature after his kind." The language 

52 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



53 



is as if they were exclusively of earthly 
origin and nature. But when man was to 
be created, neither the waters nor the earth 
were commanded to produce him. There 
was counsel in heaven, and God said, "Let 
us make man." " And the Lord God formed 
man of the dust of the ground, and breathed 
into his nostrils the breath of life, and man 
became a living soul." Whatever criticisms 
may be resorted to respecting the phrases, 
" breath of life," and " living soul," it is cer- 
tain, from the account of the creation of man, 
that he is a being of very far nobler nature 
and higher destiny than the various orders 
of animals. 

But, secondly, it is the glory of man that 
he was created in the image of God. " And 
God said, Let us make man in our image, 
after our likeness. So God created man in 
his own image, in the image of God created 
he him, male and female created he them." 
Here arises one of the most important in- 
quiries in the whole discussion, viz. : what is 



54 



IMMORTAMTY OF THE SOUL. 



the image and likeness of God in which man 
was created ? 

The image was corporeal, says one anni- 
hilationist writer. It is almost incredible 
that any man with the Bible in his hand 
should embrace an error so gross and so im- 
pious. But hear his language : " But it is 
urged that man cannot be in the image of 
God in respect to bodily form, for God is 
without form, body or parts. A grand mis- 
take, reader, and one that has not been with- 
out its weight in giving rise to the interpre- 
tation of Gen. i. 26, already refuted.' 5 And 
after making what he regards as an argument, 
he concludes thus : " And there is no defi- 
nition given to the word (image) when ap- 
plied to a material object like man, which 
will allow us to refer it to anything else but 
the outward shape, the physical contour. We 
hence conclude that Gen. i. 27 simply in- 
forms us that in this respect man resembled 
his Maker."* It cannot be necessary, in this 
* " Mortal or Immortal," pp. 10-12. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 55 



day, and in this country, to expose an error so 
exceedingly gross. Paul tells us that when 
men became fools they " changed the glory 
of the incorruptible God into an image made 
like to corruptible man ;" and therefore God 
abandoned thein.* We need no better evi- 
dence of the truth of the doctrine of the im- 
mortality of the soul than the fact, if it be 
a fact, that the opposite doctrine can be sus- 
tained only by degrading the Creator of all. 

Another writer of the same class says : 
" We know that the image of God, in which 
man was made, was not corporeal, for God 
is Spirit." But he asks, " Why should it 
be questioned that the image of God, in 
which man was made, was governmental, and 
only governmental? The delegation of do- 
minion is the predominant thought in the 
passage," f etc. We answer : 

1. To make the image merely government- 
al is inconsistent with the inspired account. 
It is certain that "the delegation of do- 

* Rom. i. 22, 23. f " Quest, of Ages." p, 14. 
5* 



56 nrtfOETALITY OF THE SOUL. 



minion" over inferior creatures could not 
take place till after man was created, but it 
is expressly declared that God created man 
in his image. It was in the act of creation, 
not in the after act of delegating dominion, 
that the image of God was imparted. The 
image, therefore, belongs to the soul, and does 
not consist in any extraneous thing. The 
fact that man bore the image of God was 
the reason why he had authority over the 
animal creation, but the image is one thing, 
the authority, another. 

In the first Epistle to the Corinthians the 
apostle speaks of the man, in contrast with 
the woman, as " the image and glory of God," 
and this language is understood to refer to 
delegated authority.* But this is not incon- 
sistent with the common interpretation of the 
passage under consideration; for it has been 
well remarked, "When, in Gen. i. 26, 27, it 
is said, God created man in his own image, 
the reference is as much to woman as to man, 
* 1 Cor. xi. 7. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 57 



for it is immediately added, 'Male and female 
created he them/ " * 

2. The Scriptures abundantly confirm the 
obvious meaning of the inspired account of 
man's creation, that the image of God be- 
longs to the soul itself, and they leave no 
room to doubt in what that image consists. 
One of the annihilationist authors gives us 
some curious criticisms on the original He- 
brew. The word translated likeness, he in- 
forms us, " is very general in its meaning, 
implying some kind of equivalence, either in 
the way of reality or of representation and 
with this statement he dismisses the word, 
leaving his readers to discover, if they can, 
what kind of" equivalence" it implies in the 
passage he is interpreting. The word trans- 
lated image, he says, " signifies an image or 
representation that may be compared, but 
must also be contrasted, with the object which 
it is designed to represent." He refers us to 
Ezek. xvi, 17 and Ps. xxxix. 6, and suc- 
* Dr, Hodge, in Loco. 



58 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



ceeds in reaching the conclusion that image 
means a shadow — that " man at first was only 
the image or shadow of God" — "the life 
of man was but the shadow of the immor- 
tality of God." * 

There can be no greater abuse of the prin- 
ciples of language than such criticism as 
this. The words translated " likeness 99 and 
"image," like all other important words, 
have very different meanings when applied 
to different things. The question before us 
is this : What do these words mean when 
used to express the likeness of one intelligent 
being to another? And the only way to 
obtain a satisfactory answer to this question 
is to examine other passages in which these 
words are used to express such likeness. Now, 
in neither of the passages referred to by this 
writer is the word translated image used for 
such purpose. The subjects to which it re- 
lates are wholly different; and it would be as 
wise to quote a passage that speaks of the 
*" Quest, of Ages," pp. 13, 14. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 59 



head of a nail, in order to ascertain the mean- 
ing of the word head as applied to a man, as 
to refer to those passages to determine what 
is the image of God in which man was cre- 
ated. 

Both the words in question are found in 
Gen. v. 3, where it is said, Adam " begat a 
son in his own likeness, after his image/' 
Is the word likeness here " very general in its 
meaning, implying some kind of equivalence " ? 
Does the word image here signify " a repre- 
sentation that may be compared, but must 
also be contrasted, with the object it is de- 
signed to represent " ? Was Seth merely the 
shadow of his father? The unlearned reader 
is at no loss to understand the meaning of 
these words as here used; and the* obvious 
meaning here will help us to explain their 
meaning in the passage we are examining. 

In the Septuagint the Hebrew word for 
image is translated by the Greek word eikon, 
and this last word is repeatedly used in the 
New Testament to express the image of God. 



60 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



In Col. i. 15, Jesus Christ is said to be "the 
image of the invisible God." It will scarcely 
be pretended that here the word image means 
shadow, and must be contrasted, as well as 
compared, with that which it represents. Evi- 
dently it is used in its highest sense, signify- 
ing that Jesus Christ is "the brightness of 
his Father's glory, and the express image of 
his person " — that he possesses the same na- 
ture and perfections. 

In Col. iii. 10 believers are said to have 
" put on the new man, which is renewed in 
knowledge after the image of Him that cre- 
ated him." The image of God into which 
believers are renewed consists in knowledge 
— not in mere intellectual knowledge, but 
true wisdom. Originally, God not only cre- 
ated man an intelligent being, but of such 
moral nature that he was capable of know- 
ing, loving and serving him. Depravity — 
the result of the fall of man — has blinded 
and perverted his intellect, so that " the nat- 
ural man receiveth not the thing's of the 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 61 



Spirit of God, neither can he know them." 
The renewing influence of the Holy Spirit, 
removing: the cause of blindness, enlightens 
the soul. With open or unveiled face it be- 
holds the glory of God. Man was created 
in the image of God. He is now, by the 
Holy Spirit, created anew in the same image. 
The renewed image consists in that knowledge 
which a pure mind only can possess. The 
original image, then, must have been the 
same. 

Again, believers, as Paul teaches, were 
" predestinated to be conformed to the image 
of his Son,"* and this is explained when the 
same apostle says, they were chosen before 
the foundation of the world, that they should 
be " holy and without blame before him in 
love."f They bear the image of Christ, and 
consequently the image of God, as they be- 
come holy. The image, therefore, consists 
in holiness. And this is in accordance with 
the language of the same apostle, when he 
* Kom. viii. 29. f Eph. I 4. 



62 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



says of believers : " But we all, with open 
face beholding as in a glass the glory of the 
Lord, are changed into the same image from 
glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the 
Lord."* The same truth is taught by Solo- 
mon when he says : " Lo, this only have I 
found, that God hath made man upright." f 
The inspired account of the creation of 
man, then, conducts us to the undoubting 
conclusion that his soul is spirit, not matter. 
God is spirit, and it is absurd to say that 
matter, however refined or organized, can bear 
the image of spirit, especially the intellectual 
and moral image of spirit. God is an infinite 
spirit : he made man a finite spirit. He is an 
infinitely intelligent spirit : he made man a 
finitely intelligent spirit. He is infinitely 
and immutably holy : he made man finitely 
and mutably holy. Now, to say that a ma- 
terial organism can have the intellectual and 
moral image of the infinite spirit, is to say 
that two substances of radically different na- 
* 2 Cor. Hi 13. f Eccl - 



IMMOETALITY OF THE SOUL. 63 



tures may possess the same properties or 
qualities, which is absurd. 

We have precisely the same evidence that 
the soul of man is spirit as that God is 
spirit. For, in the first place, the same words 
in Hebrew and Greek are used with refer- 
ence to both, viz. : ruah and pneuma. The 
Psalmist says : " Thou sendest forth thy spirit, 
they are created." The Hebrew word for 
spirit is ruah ; the Greek, as in the Septua- 
gint, is pneuma. Speaking of the death of 
man, Solomon says : " The spirit returns to 
God who gave it." Here the same Hebrew 
and Greek words are used as in the preced- 
ing passage. It would be easy to give an 
indefinite number of similar examples. Paul 
brings the two together thus : " For what 
man knoweth the things of a man, save the 
spirit (pneuma) of man which is in him? 
Even so the things of God knoweth no man, 
but the spirit (pneuma) of God." * 

In the second place, God is represented as, 
* 1 Cor. ii. 11. 



64 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 

in a peculiar sense, the Father or Creator of 
the spirits of men. At death the dust re- 
turns to the earth as it was, " and the spirit 
shall return unto God who gave it." God is 
the Creator of the bodies of men, but he 
gives their spirits in a sense in which he 
does not give their bodies. He " stretcheth 
forth the heavens and layeth the foundation 
of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man 
within him." * The spirit is not generated, 
as is the body, but God forms it in man. Ac- 
cordingly, the apostle reasons thus : " Further- 
more, we have had fathers of our flesh which 
corrected us, and we gave them reverence: 
shall we not much rather be in subjection 
to the Father of spirits and live ?" f On this 
passage McNight remarks : ?/ By distinguish- 
ing between the fathers of our flesh and the 
Father of our spirits, the apostle teaches us 
that we derive only our flesh from our parents, 
but our spirit from God." "The rational 
soul," says Owen, " which is immediately 
* Zech. xii. 1. f Heb. xii. 9. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 65 



created and infused, having no other "father 
but God himself." " Father of our spirits/' 
says Doddridge, "by whom that noble part 
of our nature was produced, in the produc- 
tion of which our earthly parents had no 
share." 

3. In the third place, as already remarked, 
the soul possesses the same properties by 
which God is proved to be spirit, though 
it is finite. God is an intelligent Being, a 
voluntary Agent, and possesses moral cha- 
racter, therefore he is spirit. The soul pos- 
sesses the same properties, therefore it is 
spirit. 

But how does all this prove the immor- 
tality of the soul ? It reveals the nature of 
the soul, and thus justifies, and even demands, 
the conclusion that it is immortal. If the 
soul were, like the body, material, the pro- 
bability would seem to be that it dies when 
the body dies. But it is spirit — a substance 
of a radically different nature. Therefore the 
causes which produce the death of the ma- 



66 IMMOKTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



terial nature cannot affect the death of the 
spiritual nature. The soul is spirit, and, 
therefore, it is not, like the body, subject to 
decay and death. It is in the image of God, 
and therefore will not die. That the annihi- 
lationists see the force of this argument is 
evident from their efforts to prove that the 
image of God does not belong to the soul. 

And here it may be worth while to notice 
their peculiar reasonings. The image of God, 
in which man was created, says one of them, 
was not " intellectual, for God is omniscient." 
That is to say, a finite intelligence cannot be 
in the image or likeness of the infinite in- 
telligence. This is absurd, and it flatly con- 
tradicts Paul, who teaches that believers are 
renew r ed in knowledge after the image of Him 
who created man. The same writer says, the 
image was not " moral, for God is holy, and 
the attribute or characteristic of holiness pre- 
sumes the possession of the knowledge of 
good and evil, and this knowledge man did 
not possess w T hen he was made, and it was 



IMMOETALITY OF THE SOUL. 67 



this that he was forbidden to obtain." * 
Strange sentiments, these ! Man, we are told, 
could not be holy without the knowledge of 
good and evil, and this knowledge he was 
forbidden to obtain. Of course, then, he was 
forbidden to be holy, and would have sinned 
if he had become holy ! Can anything be 
more absurd? It is not true that holiness 
presumes the possession of any knowledge 
that man was forbidden to gain. Holiness 
is conformity to God's law, which was written 
on his heart, and " love is the fulfilling of 
the law." Can any one believe that our 
first parents must sin against God before 
they could love and obey him? The truth 
is, man, as he came from the hand of God, 
must have been holy or unholy, for his soul 
possesses moral affections of which it can no 
more divest itself than it can revolutionize 
its nature; and those affections are necessarily 
right or wrong, holy or sinful, and so are the 
acts which flow from them. To say, there- 
* 6i Quest, of Ages," p. 13. 

6 * 



68 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 

fore, as does this writer, that, " in his primeval 
state," man was innocent and " very good/' 
but not holy, is absurd. 

Another writer of the same creed says : 
" The creation in the divine likeness no more 
proves man's absolute immortality than it 
proves his eternal pre-existence, his omnis- 
cience or his possession of any other divine 
attribute." * If by the phrase " absolute im- 
mortality " he means an immortality which 
is either underived or independent of God, 
we contend for no such immortality. But if 
he means immortality in the sense in which 
this word is universally applied to the soul, 
as already explained, he talks absurdly, and 
contradicts his own doctrine. He himself 
teaches that believers in Christ are to possess 
immortality. Does he mean by this that 
they are to possess one of the divine attri- 
butes ? The bodies of the saints at the resur- 
rection are to " put on immortality." Will 
they be clothed with divine attributes ? May 
*"Debt and Grace/' p. 166. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 69 

not the soul of man, then, be immortal; with- 
out becoming infinite ? 

Another dashing writer resorts to syllogistic 
reasoning thus : " Formally stated, their ar- 
gument is this: 1. God only hath immor- 
tality. 2. Man is created in the image of 
God. 3. Therefore man is immortal." And 
he shows up the absurdity of the argument 
by another syllogism : " 1. God is omni- 
present. 2. Man is created in the image of 
God. 3. Therefore man is omnipresent!"* 
It is scarcely necessary to say to the intelli- 
gent reader that sensible men are not accus- 
tomed to resort to such nonsense in their rea- 
sonings as this writer attributes to them. The 
argument, correctly stated, is this: 1. God is 
a spirit. 2. The soul of man was created in 
the image of God. 3. Therefore the soul of 
man is spirit. Another syllogism is necessary 
to complete the argument, viz. : 1 . Spirit is not, 
like matter, subject to decay and death. 2. 
The soul of man is spirit. 3. Therefore the 
* " Mortal and Immortal," p. 9. 



70 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



soul of man is not subject to decay and 
death. 

It may be worth while to pause here long 
enough to expose another piece of shallow 
sophistry. Replying to the argument that 
" the soul of man is immaterial, and there- 
fore is immortal," one of our authors says : 
" The premise is merely a negative propo- 
sition, from which a positive conclusion can- 
not be justly drawn. It merely states what 
the soul of man is ncitJ 1 And he tests the 
logic thus : " Man is not an ant, therefore he 
is an archangel. This paper is not ivory, 
therefore it is gold."* This is a totally in- 
correct statement of the argument. The man 
who would reason thus would simply render 
himself ridiculous. There are b«t two sub- 
stances in the universe, the material and the 
immaterial, or matter and spirit; and when 
the advocates of the immortality of the soul 
say that it is immaterial, they mean that it is 
spirit, not matter. This usage of the word 
* " Quest, of Ages," p. 4. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



71 



immaterial must be known to every scholar. 
The proposition, therefore, is not merely a 
negative one : it is both negative and positive. 
The meaning is that the soul is not matter, 
but spirit, and therefore it is not mortal, but 
is immortal. 

The inspired history of the creation of man, 
then, proves that his soul is spirit, not mat- 
ter. And if it is spirit, it is immortal, unless 
spirits die. 

But we are met with the triumphant re- 
ply that this argument proves all animals 
immortal, and, therefore, proves too much. 
" Are not their souls," it is asked, " reduced 
to nonentity by means of death ?" But where 
is the evidence that the spirits of animals 
are reduced to nonentity by death? "Xor 
can we find anything," says Butler, " through- 
out the whole analogy of nature, to afford us 
even the slightest presumption that animals 
ever lose their living powers, much less if it 
were possible that they lose them by death, 
for we have no faculties wherewith to trace 



72 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



any beyond or through it, so as to see what 
becomes of them. This event removes them 
from our view. It destroys the sensible proof, 
which we had before their death , of their be- 
ing possessed of living powers, but does not 
appear to afford the least reason to believe 
that they are then or by that event deprived 
of thein." * It is neither wise nor safe to 
assume without evidence that the spirits of 
animals perish, and to conclude that, there- 
fore, the souls of men die also. 

But if there is no reason to believe that 
the spirits of animals perish, the evidence 
must be very strong that the souls of men 
are immortal; for they possess an incompar- 
ably higher nature, and, therefore, as we 
must conclude, an incomparably higher des- 
tiny. The instincts of animals do not approx- 
imate the noble intellectual powers of the 
soul of man ; they are utterly incapable of 
moral character, the peculiar glory of man, 
or of conceiving of the eternal future, and of 
* " Analogy." 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



73 



being influenced by the motives drawn- from 
the future. If, therefore, it were certain that 
what are called the spirits of animals become 
extinct, this would not afford even a pre- 
sumptive evidence that the soul of man, cre- 
ated in the image of God, dies. The argu- 
ment, therefore, from the creation of man, is 
unanswerable. 



CHAPTEE IV. 



THE RATIONAL ARGUMENT. 

TT will be satisfactory now to inquire how 
far the known properties of the soul con- 
firm the obvious meaning of the Scriptures 
respecting its nature and destiny. Some of 
the annihilationist authors insist that " what- 
ever we know of a future life must come to 
us by direct revelation," that "reason can- 
not prove man to be immortal — the oracle is 
dumb, or, like those of Delphi and Dodona, 
mutters only an ambiguous reply that leaves 
us in utter bewilderment." It is true that 
some philosophers, both in ancient and modern 
times, have doubted or denied the immortality 
of the soul, but many of them have also 
doubted or denied the existence of God. 
Xow, it is certain (for the Scriptures so 
declare) that the works of nature afford 

74 



IMMOETALITY OF THE SOUL. 75 

innumerable clear proofs of his being, and 
illustrations of his perfections. The same 
modes of reasoning that led them to false 
conclusions on the latter subject may have 
misled them on the former. He who could 
study the wonders of nature without dis- 
covering the existence of nature's God might 
easily study the visible man without learning 
the nature and destiny of the invisible soul. 
On both of these subjects we doubtless need 
the light of revelation, but the teachings of 
revelation on both may be confirmed by those 
of reason. When we have gained, by the 
light of revelation, the idea of one infinitely 
perfect God, we can see clearly, in the works 
of nature, the evidences of his being and 
of his perfections. And so, when we have 
learned from the Scriptures the nature of the 
soul, we may discover, in its known properties, 
strong confirmation of their obvious teaching. 
For if the works of the infinite Spirit reveal 
his nature and attributes, it is absurd to assert 

that the works of finite spirits cannot do the 
7 



76 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



same for them. As in studying the character 
of God, so in examining into the nature of 
the soul, we must avail ourselves of both 
sources of information, revelation and facts. 

But another writer, of the same creed, 
magnifies the discoveries of the science of 
physiology as strongly confirming the doc- 
trine of the Bible, as he understands it, that 
the soul is mortal. He talks learnedly of 
"the microscopic spermatozoon in which the 
man is originated, and from which he is born," 
and which " contains within its mysterious 
minuteness the vital and active immaterial 
principle that is essentially the future man, 
being the soul of the future man." He tells 
us, too, of "the vital seminal souls" that 
perish and are no more.* We are disposed 
to give to the science of physiology all the 
credit which is due to it; but when we are 
told that it has discovered that immaterial 
souls perish and are no more, we boldly 
deny that it has made any such discoveries. 
* " Quest, of Ages," pp. 35, 36. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



77 



Its investigations are limited to that" which 
is material, and no microscope has yet been 
made that can reveal the immaterial soul. 

Kejecting, then, the opinion that reason can 
afford us no light on this subject, rejecting 
also the unscientific pretensions of physiolo- 
gists who would push us into materialism, 
we proceed to the inquiry, how far the known 
properties of the soul afford information re- 
specting its nature and destiny. Our exami- 
nation will be brief, and not at all meta- 
physical or obscure. 

We begin what we have to say on this 
subject with the truth, admitted by all, that 
substances are known to us only by their 
properties. It follows legitimately, from this 
truth, that different properties indicate sub- 
stances as different — in other words, that sub- 
stances are as different from each other as 
their properties. For example, the properties 
of light are very different from those of air, 
and it cannot be doubted that the two sub- 
stances are in their nature as different. The 



78 IMMOETALITY OF THE SOUL. 



same may be affirmed of an indefinite number 
of material substances. There are certain 
properties in which they all agree, and, there- 
fore, all are called matter. There are other 
properties in which they differ, indicating as 
great difference in the substances. 

Now, if it appear that two substances have 
not a single property in common, but that 
their properties are not only different, but 
opposite, the conclusion is fully warranted 
that the substances possess radically different 
natures. And this being so, to call them by 
the same name is to abuse language and mis- 
lead the mind. But it is a fact that mind 
and matter possess not a single property in 
common. It is a fact that the properties of 
these two substances are not only different, 
but opposite. This will be made clear by 
comparing, or rather contrasting, the prop- 
erties of mind and those of matter. 

I. One of the properties of matter is in- 
ertness. It cannot move itself, nor stop its 
motion. One of the most remarkable prop- 



IMMORTALITY OP THE SOUL. 79 



erties of mind is activity. It can no" more 
cease to think and feel than it can cease to 
exist. The question has been much discussed 
whether the mind always thinks. Locke 
stands prominent amongst those who answer 
this question negatively. We maintain that 
the evidence is conclusive in favor of an 
affirmative answer, that the mind never ceases 
to think. We proceed to assign reasons in 
support of this view : 

1. All agree that, during waking hours, 
the mind is incessantly active. We cannot, 
if we would, cease to think. We may choose 
the subject that shall occupy our thoughts, 
but we must think. If we do not furnish 
our minds with a subject, they will find one, 
or will wander from object to object, con- 
trolled by the laws of association, till they 
light on some theme that takes hold of the 
feelings, and there confines the thoughts. On 
this point there is no controversy. 

2. All agree that the mind is often active 

during sleep ; for all admit that dreams do 
7* 



80 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



constantly occur — that often the mind is in- 
tensely active and the feelings greatly ex- 
cited in dreams. It is, then, certain that 
sleep does not necessarily suspend thought, 
for if it did there could be no such thing as 
dreaming. But if sleep does not suspend 
thought, do we know of anything connected 
with sleep that does at any time suspend it? 
If there is anything of the kind, it is certain 
it operates only occasionally, not uniformly, 
for we do often dream. But no one pretends 
to have discovered any other cause of the 
suspension of thought in sleep. Since, then, 
thought is not suspended by sleep, and we 
know of nothing connected with sleep that 
does at any time suspend it, the conclusion 
seems clearly warranted that the mind does 
always think during sleep — that activity is 
one of its essential properties. 

Locke argues that it is " hard to conceive 
that anything should think and not be con- 
scious of it." But the sleeping man is con- 
scious of thinking, although he does not at 



IMMOETAIilTY OF THE SOUL. 



81 



ways, on waking, remember his thoughts. But 
Locke replies to this : " That the soul in a 
sleeping man should be this moment busy 
a-thinking, and the next moment, in a waking 
man, not remember nor be able to recollect 
one jot of all those thoughts, is very hard to 
be conceived." To this we answer — 

1st. That very often, during our waking 
hours, we entirely fail to remember the 
thoughts that have but just occupied our 
minds. AVho has not often, whilst in con- 
versation, suddenly lost the thought he was 
just about to express, and been wholly un- 
able to recall it? This is very common, 
especially when anything has occurred sud- 
denly to interrupt the train of thought. Is 
it strange, then, that on awaking from sound 
sleep, and finding ourselves surrounded with 
objects wholly different from those which 
have occupied the mind, we should fail to 
recall our sleeping thoughts, especially when 
there is nothing to call our attention to them ? 
Some of our waking thoughts we wholly for- 



82 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



get, others we remember indistinctly, whilst 
others are vividly impressed on our minds. 
The same principle governs our recollection 
of waking and of sleeping thoughts. That is to 
say, whatever takes strong hold of the feel- 
ings is remembered distinctly, whilst what- 
ever awakens little interest is forgotten or 
imperfectly remembered. A distressing or a 
delightful dream is likely to be remembered, 
whilst dreams that have not strongly inter- 
ested the feelings are forgotten. 

Sir "William Hamilton, giving his own ex- 
perience, says : " I have always observed 
that, when suddenly awaked during sleep 
(and to ascertain the fact I have caused my- 
self to be roused at different seasons of the 
night), I have always been able to observe 
that I was in the middle of a dream. The 
recollection of this dream was not always 
equally vivid. On some occasions I was 
able to trace it back until the train was grad- 
ually lost at a remote distance; on others I 
was hardly aware of more than one or two 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



83 



of the latter links of the chain; and some- 
times was scarcely certain of more than the 
fact that I was not awakened from an un- 
conscious state." The experience of Hamil- 
ton, we do not doubt, corresponds with that 
of most persons whose attention has been 
turned to this point. It certainly corre- 
sponds with our own experience through a 
series of years ; and we fully endorse the fol- 
lowing statement made by him : "I have my- 
self at different times turned my attention to 
the point, and, as far as my observations go, 
they certainly tend to prove that, during 
sleep, the mind is never either inactive or 
wholly unconscious of its activity." 

2d. But that the activity of the mind dur- 
ing sleep is not disproved by the fact that 
often persons do not remember to have 
dreamed, is fully established by the phe- 
nomena of somnambulism. That in this state 
the mind is active, often intensely active, can- 
not be doubted; and yet the somnambulist, 
when awake, never remembers what he was 



84 IMMOETALITY OF THE SOUL. 



thinking of when asleep. " It is the pecu- 
liarity of somnambulism — it is the differential 
quality by which that state is contradistin- 
guished from the state of dreaming — that we 
have no recollection, when we awake, of what 
has occurred during its continuance. Con- 
sciousness is thus cut in two : memory does 
not connect the train of consciousness in the 
one state with the train of consciousness in 
the other. When the patient again relapses 
into the state of somnambulism, he again 
remembers all that had occurred during every 
former alternative of that state. But he not 
only remembers this : he recalls also the 
events of his normal existence, so that, 
whereas the patient in his somnambulic crisis 
has a memory of his whole life, in his wak- 
ing intervals he has a memory only of half 
of his life."* It is not only true that in the 
somnambulic state the mind is active, but it 
possesses an extraordinary activity. " In this 
remarkable state," says Hamilton, " the vari- 
ous mental faculties are usually in a higher 
* Hamilton. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 85 



degree of power than in the natural;" and he 
mentions having three works written during 
the crisis by three different somnambulists. 
It is, then, clear beyond a question that the 
mind is often intensely active in sleep, whilst 
it has no recollection in its waking hours of 
the thoughts that have occupied it. 

3. There are facts which demonstrate that 
even in what is called the comatose state the 
mind is active. AYe are aware that this has 
been denied. Dr. Good, in his "Book of Na- 
ture," maintains that in complete paroxysms 
of apoplexy, sleepy coma, suspended anima- 
tion from drowning, and the like, no man is 
conscious of a single thought or idea. But 
even if we had no facts to prove the contrary, 
all that could be affirmed would be that, on 
coming out of these states, persons do not re- 
member to have been thinking. But Dr. Aber- 
crombie states the following interesting fact : 
" A case has been related to me of a boy who 
at the age of four received a fracture of the 
skull, for which he underwent the operation 



86 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 

of trepan. He was at the time in a state of 
perfect stupor, and after his recovery retained 
no recollection either of the accident or the 
operation. At the age of fifteen, during the 
delirium of a fever, he gave his mother a 
correct description of the operation and the 
persons who were present at it, with their 
dress and other minute particulars. He had 
never been observed to allude to it before, 
and no means were known by which he could 
have acquired the circumstances which he 
mentioned."* He mentions several other 
facts proving the activity of the mind in 
perfect apoplexy. 

The evidence seems conclusive that the 
mind always thinks — that activity is an es- 
sential property of mind. It follows that 
the mind is not matter, but a substance of an 
opposite nature. 

This conclusion is greatly strengthened by 
the fact that the activity of the mind is volun- 
tary. Whilst we cannot cease thinking, we 
* " Intellec. Philos.," Part iii., Sec. 3, 4. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 87 

are yet conscious of the power to give "direc- 
tion to our thoughts — to choose the subject 
about which our thoughts at any particular 
time shall be occupied. In proof of this we 
need only appeal to the consciousness of every 
man. Now, it is certain that matter is gov- 
erned by fixed laws. "Voluntariness, there- 
fore, cannot be predicated of it. Were the 
mind material, it must act as it is acted on. 
The certain fact that its activity, so far as the 
subject of its thoughts is concerned, is volun- 
tary, proves that it is not matter. 

The argument is complete when we state 
the further fact that much of the activity of 
the mind is not only voluntary, but moral. 
That the human mind has thoughts, feelings 
and purposes which may be properly charac- 
terized as right or wrong, is a truth which is 
intuitive. Few comparatively have ever 
denied it even in theory. All have acknow- 
ledged it in practice. But were the mind a 
material organism governed by fixed laws, 
its acts would be neither right nor wrong. 

8 



88 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



Men would be incapable alike of virtue or 
vice. 

II. The mind presents as strong a contrast 
with matter in its other properties as in its 
ceaseless, voluntary, moral activity. Matter, 
for example, is extended, mind is not. Mat- 
ter is divisible, mind is indivisible. Matter 
possesses the property of attraction, mind 
does not. As already remarked, these two 
substances, mind and matter, possess not a 
single property in common. In all their 
properties they stand in striking contrast. 
The conclusion is fully warranted that the 
mind is not material. 

III. It is important to notice another re- 
markable feature of the soul which may re- 
veal its nature, viz. : its capacity to look to 
the future, and its susceptibility of being in- 
fluenced by motives drawn from the eternal 
future, together with its intense desire to live 
for ever. From early childhood it begins to 
look forward, and to have desires, hopes and 
fears respecting future interests. Nor is it 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



89 



possible to confine such thoughts and anx- 
ieties to the boundaries of time. Under the 
impulse of its nature, the soul overleaps those 
boundaries, and inquires anxiously respecting 
the eternal ages, and both its moral conduct 
and its happiness are mightily influenced by 
the prospects that open before it along the 
track of those ages. Hope seizes upon and 
rejoices exceedingly in a bright future, and 
fears agitate the soul when the future is over- 
cast with dark and portentous clouds. Noth- 
ing short of eternal life can satisfy its hopes 
or subdue its fears. All but the most de- 
graded men act habitually more or less un- 
der the influence of motives drawn from 
eternity. Their moral conduct is more or 
less controlled by such motives, and their hap- 
piness is increased or diminished by hope or 
fear. 

Such, in a few words, are the leading fea- 
tures of the human soul. Others might be 
mentioned, but these are sufficient for the ar- 
gument. In view of these properties of the 



90 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 

soul, we raise two questions, viz. : first, To 
what conclusion do they conduct us respect- 
ing its nature f and, secondly, To what con- 
clusion do they conduct us respecting its 

destiny f 

1. "What is the nature of the soul, as dis- 
covered through its properties? Is it mat- 
ter, or is it spirit? It is certainly the one 
or the other, since these are the only sub- 
stances known to men. One of the annihi- 
lationist writers, as already quoted, once and 
again objects to w r hat he calls "the silent 
assumption that because the soul of man is 
not matter, therefore it is spirit ; ,} and he evi- 
dently seeks to make the impression that it 
is neither matter nor spirit. And yet he ap- 
plies to the whole man, soul and body, the 
language, "Dust thou art, and unto dust 
shalt thou return." But it is certain that 
the soul is a substance, for it has properties, 
and until some third substance shall be dis- 
covered, we must conclude that it is either 
matter or spirit. He affirms, indeed, that 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 91 



"mere human reason does not and cannot 
know anything of spirit, except as appre- 
hending the existence and ubiquity of God 
through a consideration of his visible works."* 
This is a mere assertion, and it is absurd. The 
works of the infinite Spirit reveal him : why 
may not the works of finite spirits reveal 
them? The truth is, w T e are quite as well 
acquainted with spirit as with matter. We 
know nothing of either except what we learn 
from their properties, but we are as well ac- 
quainted with the properties of spirit as with 
those of matter. 

"We have before us, then, two substances 
whose properties are essentially different, and 
even opposite. The one is inert, the other is 
active. The one moves only as it is moved, 
the other is perpetually moving itself. The 
one is controlled by fixed laws, the other is 
constantly putting forth voluntary acts. The 
one, because governed by fixed laws, is in- 
capable of moral and accountable action, the 
* " Quest, of Ages," pp. 5, 34. 

8 * 



92 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



other is a moral agent, the subject of a moral 
government. Now, the conclusion to which 
we are authorized, and even constrained, to 
come, is this : Since these substances are 
known to us only by their properties, and 
since their properties are essentially different, 
and even opposite, the substances are in their 
nature essentially different. The one we call 
matter, the other we call spirit. But it mat- 
ters little by what names they may be desig- 
nated : the radical difference in their natures 
is demonstrated. And yet, as before remark- 
ed, it is impossible for any one to tell what 
spirit is, except by saying it is a substance 
that thinks, reasons, chooses, loves, hates, 
rejoices, sorrows, hopes, fears. It is enough, 
however, that the two substances differ essen- 
tially in their nature. 

2. The next question relates to the destiny 
of the soul. To what conclusion are we con- 
ducted respecting its destiny by the considera- 
tion of its properties ? 1st. In the first place, 
since it is certain that it is a substance whose 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 93 



nature is radically different from that of the 
body, there is no reason to suppose that the 
death of the body destroys or impairs its life. 
For since the two substances are in nature 
radically different, they must be operated on 
by causes as different. Those causes, there- 
fore, which destroy the life of the body, such 
as a bullet passing into the head or the heart, 
in all probability have no effect whatever 
upon the soul, except to dissolve the mysteri- 
ous tie that binds the two together. Since, 
then, there is no reason to think that the 
death of the body impairs the life of the soul, 
and since we know of no other causes which 
are likely to operate on the soul to extinguish 
its life, the only conclusion to which we can 
come is, that it survives the body, and lives 
in another state. Still further, since we know 
the soul only as an active, thinking substance, 
since activity seems to belong to its very na- 
ture, it cannot be supposed that at the death 
of the body it ceases to be active and becomes 
unconscious. 2d. The innate desire of the 



94 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 

soul for immortality, together with its capa- 
city to conceive the eternal future, and to be 
mightily influenced, both in its moral con- 
duct and its happiness, by considerations and 
motives drawn from eternity, indicate the 
purpose of the Creator that it shall live for 
ever. But it is objected that this argument 
" is based upon the assumption that an ardent 
desire to possess an object is an evidence that 
the object so ardently desired is actually pos- 
sessed," and that " if, as an argument, it were 
logical and sound, it would fill the face of the 
inhabited earth with wealthy and powerful 
men, for every man who has an ardent desire 
for money would be a millionaire, and every 
man who thirsts for power would be a poten- 
tate." * This objection would be a complete 
refutation of the argument if we were weak 
enough to contend that the mere fact that 
men desire immortality proves them immortal. 
But this is not the argument. The argument 
is based on the broad principle that the de- 
* "Quest, of Ages," p. 9, 10. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 95 



sires, capacities and susceptibilities which God 
has imparted to his creatures were designed 
to adapt them to the spheres in which they 
were to act, and to the destinies they were 
to fill; and consequently those desires, capa- 
cities and susceptibilities do reveal the pur- 
poses of God respecting them. This principle 
is seen to prevail throughout the whole animal 
kingdom. This will not be disputed. But 
let us see how the principle applies to man. 
His Creator gave him appetites, and he pro- 
vided the proper means for their use and 
gratification. He endowed him with natural 
and social affections, and thus his purpose 
was indicated that men should live in families 
and in society. He imparted to the soul a 
taste for the beautiful, and he filled the visible 
universe with beautiful objects. He gave to 
the soul a moral sense, and he gave the moral 
law to guide it. He imparted to it moral 
affections, and he bade it love him and its 
fellow-creatures, and be happy. Thus far it 
is certain that for every appetite, affection, 



96 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL,. 

taste and susceptibility of man God provided 
corresponding spheres of action and means of 
gratification, and those appetites, affections, 
tastes and susceptibilities indicate his pur- 
poses concerning man. 

But the Creator also gave to the soul such 
a nature that it is capable of looking to the 
eternal future, and of being powerfully in- 
fluenced by motives drawn thence, and that 
it intensely desires to live for ever. And 
here a broad distinction is to be made be- 
tween those desires which belong to the na- 
ture of the soul as it came from the hand of 
God, and those which result from ignorance 
and depravity. The former clearly indicate 
the purposes of the Creator respecting the soul ; 
the latter are the evidences of its estrangement 
from him. " The love of money is the root 
of all evil." Will it be pretended that God 
originally planted this root in the soul ? The 
love of power is selfishness. Will it be said 
that this is native to the soul as it came 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 97 



from the hand of the Creator? Is it not 
written " that God hath made man upright" ? 
And is it not true that the wiser and the 
more virtuous men become, the less they 
thirst for either riches or power ? 

But how is it with the desire for immor- 
tality ? Is it, like the love of money and of 
power, the result of depravity and alienation 
from God ? It exists in all men, nor is it 
possible for any one, if he would, to banish it 
from his soul. Depravity may weaken but 
cannot destroy it. And it is certain that the 
wiser and the holier men become, the stronger 
grows this desire to live for ever. It is the 
wicked and degraded who say, " Let us eat 
and drink, for to-morrow we die." It is the 
wise and good who live and labor " in hope 
of eternal life." Moreover, this is a feature 
of the soul to which the Scriptures constantly 
appeal. " What will it profit a man," asks 
our Lord, " if he shall gain the whole world 
and lose his soul?" The attempt to place 
such a desire on an equality with the sinful 



98 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



love of money or of power shows how loosely 
some of those men reason. 

But the argument is still stronger. It is 
not based on even an intense desire which 
belongs to the nature of the sou], but also on 
a corresponding capacity and susceptibility. 
The soul is capable of conceiving of the eter- 
nal future, and it is susceptible of feeling pow- 
erfully the motives drawn from that future. Its 
moral conduct and its happiness are thus pow- 
erfully influenced. It is so constituted that 
it cannot even enjoy present blessings unless 
the future seem bright. Hope must sweeten 
the blessings we now possess, or fear will 
embitter them. Hope must lighten present 
trials, or fear will add to their weight. 

Now, will any one pretend that these no- 
ble features of the soul give no indications 
of the purposes of the Creator respecting it ? 
Are these to constitute the one fearful excep- 
tion to the general rule that for every ca- 
pacity, susceptibility and desire which the 
Creator imparted to man he provided a cor- 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 99 



responding sphere of action and means of 
gratification? If these do not constitute a 
marvelous exception, then it is certain that 
the innate desire of the soul to live for ever, 
taken in connection with its capacity to feel 
the motives drawn from eternity, indicates 
the purpose of the Creator that it should 
possess immortality. Otherwise we must 
conclude that he designed men to live under 
a delusive hope of eternal life, or that he so 
formed the soul that, knowing the truth, it 
must be wretched. Most assuredly the fea- 
tures of the soul now under consideration 
reveal the design of the Creator that it should 
live for ever; and if such was his purpose, 
beyond a question he imparted to it a nature 
adapted to its destiny. It is therefore im- 
mortal. 

IV. These arguments are greatly strength- 
ened by the almost universal belief in the 
doctrine of the soul's immortality in all ages 
and nations. We are aware that the fact of 
this general belief has been called in question. 

9 



100 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



But with the exception of some of those 
called philosophers, there is no ground for 
doubt on the subject. Archbishop Whateley, 
whilst insisting that the doctrine of immor- 
tality was not really known till Jesus Christ 
revealed it, acknowledges that the ancient 
heathen lawgivers taught it " from a persua- 
sion of its importance for men's conduct."* 
And it is certain that it has entered into all 
the different forms of religion. Many of the 
gods worshiped by the ancient pagan nations, 
it is known, were deceased men. " As soon," 
says Gibbon, " as it was allowed that sages 
and heroes who had lived or w T ho had died 
for the benefit of their country were exalted 
to a state of power and immortality, it was 
universally confessed that they deserved, if 
not the adoration, at least the reverence, of 
all mankind." f The learned Dr. Leland 
speaks of this form of idolatry as one w r hich 
began very early and prevailed very gener- 

* " Future State," p. 24. 

f Gibbon's " Decline and Fall of Borne," v. i., p. 18. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 101 



ally in the world, and " which produced an 
amazing multiplicity of gods, and contin- 
ually increased." He quotes the statement of 
Philo Biblius that " the most ancient barba- 
rians, especially the Phoenicians and Egyp- 
tians, from whom other people took this cus- 
tom, reckoned those amongst the greatest gods 
who had been the inventors of things useful 
and necessary to human life, and who had 
been benefactors to the nations." Cicero said 
that " almost the whole heaven is filled with 
the human race; that upon searching into 
the ancient accounts, and what the Greek 
writers have deduced from them, it will be 
found that even those that are accounted the 
greater deities, dii majorum gentium, were 
taken from among men into heaven, that 
their sepulchres were shown in Greece." * 

The practice of necromancy, which pre- 
vailed in the days of Moses, proves the same 
thing, for " it is the art of raising up the 
ghosts of deceased persons to get informa- 
* Leland "On Kevolution," v. i., pp. 99, 104. 



102 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



tion from them concerning future events. " 
The ancient doctrine of metempsychosis could 
not have existed without the doctrine of the 
immortality of the soul. " The Egyptians 
believed that at the death of men their souls 
transmigrated into other human bodies, and 
that if they had been vicious they were im- 
prisoned in the bodies of unclean or ill-con- 
ditioned beasts, to expiate in them their past 
transgressions, and that after a revolution of 
some centuries they again animated other 
human bodies."* In one form or another 
the doctrine of the soul's immortality has 
been almost universal, and, as Dr. Isaac Watts 
well remarks : " The doctrine of rewards and 
punishments in a separate state of souls hath 
been one of the very chief principles or mo- 
tives whereby virtue and religion have been 
maintained in this sinful world throughout 
all former ages and natioDS." 

Very few indeed of all the unnumbered 
millions who have believed this doctrine 
*Eollin's " Ancient History/' v. L, p. 114. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 103 



could have given any philosophical reasons 
in favor of its truth, much less could they 
have given any satisfactory account of the 
state of the soul after death. Some, too, 
have attempted to prove it by arguments 
which are not sound. The same may be 
said of the universal belief in the being of 
God. The prevalence of this latter belief is 
accounted for by referring it to man's moral 
nature. The mind is so constituted that it 
must and will have religion of some kind, 
and, therefore, men will have some object of 
religious worship. May not the general be- 
lief of mankind in the doctrine of the im- 
mortality of the soul be accounted for in the 
same way ? Can it be accounted for in any 
other way ? 

It is a remarkable fact that skeptical 
philosophers, with all their learning, have 
been wholly unable to shake the faith 
of any considerable portion of our race in 
either of these great doctrines for any con- 
siderable length of time. The French phil- 
9* 



104 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



osophers might deify Reason, and inscribe 
on the public cemeteries, " Death is an eternal 
sleep;" but the deep innate convictions of the 
outraged human soul soon made their voice 
heard above the tumult of passion and crime, 
reasserted the being of God, and at the same 
time wiped out the degrading inscription 
from the cemeteries. A French atheist on 
trial for his life might say, " My name is 
Danton — my abode will soon be nonentity," * 
but the shudder with which the sentiment is 
heard is the souPs protest against the degrad- 
ing doctrine. The fact that the faith of the 
great majority of mankind in the immortality 
of the soul, like that in the being of a God, 
however mixed up w T ith superstitions and 
absurdities, has remained firm throughout all 
ages, affords strong evidence that it finds its 
foundation in the very nature of man, and if 
so, it must be true. Had it been a doctrine 
of philosophers, it would have been received, 
like their other doctrines, by but a small por- 
* Allison's " History of Europe," p. 36. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 105 



tion of the race. Had it been merely tra- 
ditionary, it would never have taken such 
hold of the human mind. To overcome 
this deep-seated conviction of the soul is a 
Herculean task. They who contend against 
the noblest convictions and aspirations of man 
should be cogent reasoners; and the proof 
must indeed be conclusive which would 
justify us in renouncing a faith apparently 
grounded in the nature of the soul. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE ESTEEMEDIATE STATE. 

TTTE come now to the third question pro- 



posed for discussion, viz.: What do 

THE SCRIPTURES TEACH RESPECTING THE 
STATE OF THE SOUL BETWEEN DEATH AND 
THE RESURRECTION ? 

Man is a fallen creature. By his trans- 
gression he has incurred the penalty of God's 
law. It is important, in the further discus- 
sion of this subject, to inquire whether the 
penalty denounced against sin has deprived 
the soul of its immortality. Or do the teach- 
ings of the Scriptures respecting the inter- 
mediate state lead to the conclusion, that the 
soul dies with the body, and that between 
death and the resurrection man has no con- 
scious existence? The sentence pronounced 
upon Adam (Gen. iii. 14-19) is interpreted by 




106 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 107 



annihilatioiiists to mean that man is wholly 
of earthly origin, and at death is reduced to 
"elemental atoms f that "no part of man 
remains in a separate conscious state in death, 
but that the whole man lies in unconsciousness 
till called to new life by the resurrection ;" 
that " death is a state of non-existence." 

Hudson, shrinking from the absurdities of 
materialism, to which his theory inevitably 
leads, and holding that the soul continues to 
exist as " an entity," regards it as dependent 
upon the physical organism for active exist- 
ence. He thinks it necessary to teach that 
it has, in the intermediate state, a kind of 
half consciousness, a degree or so above anni- 
hilation. "May we not suppose," he asks, 
"that in the disembodied state the soul is 
lost in an intuition of its past history, with 
no process of thinking, and with no note of 
time ? Kot a state of thinking — perhaps, on 
the other hand, not of unconsciousness — but 
of momentary all-consciousness, the same to 
those who die soon or late, the resurrection 



108 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



and the judgment close following." And he 
consoles himself and his readers with the sug- 
gestion : " May not a little repose be better 
for us ere the dawn of the sleepless, endless 
day ?" * Grave as the subject is, there is some- 
thing in this query so ludicrous as to provoke 
a smile. The soul, we are apt to think, must 
have become greatly exhausted in its few years 
of thought and labor here, to require a few 
hundred years of repose before it is prepared 
to enter upon its eternal rest ! As for the 
supposed state of the soul, in which it does 
not think, yet is not unconscious, possesses 
all-consciousness and is lost in the intui- 
tion of its past history, it is no conceivable 
state at all. The sentences just quoted are 
simply a string of words conveying no idea, 
but poorly concealing the degrading doctrine 
which the writer dare not plainly advocate. 
If it be found, on examination, that the 
Scriptures teach that the soul survives the 
body and passes into another state of con- 

* "Debt and Grace/' pp. 260, 261. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 109 



scious existence, a very strong evidence- will 
thus be obtained in favor of its immortality. 

1. Here it is important to say that noth- 
ing that we know of the nature and prop- 
erties of the soul affords the slightest evi- 
dence that it is dependent upon the body 
for conscious, active existence. So long as it 
continues in the body, its activities must be 
exerted mainly through the body; but whilst 
we have no means of knowing how it will 
put forth its activities in its disembodied state, 
we certainly have no reason to believe that it 
cannot act in such a state. On the contrary, 
it may be capable of higher activities than 
whilst in the gross, material body. 

II. Still further, it is a fact of great signifi- 
cance that nothing is more familiar to the 
mind of the reader of the Scriptures than 
the activities of spirits. Angels, it is true, 
have sometimes appeared in human forms, as 
when they appeared to Abraham and Lot. 
But we are expressly taught that angels are 
" spirits," and we constantly read in the New 



110 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



Testament of " unclean spirits." Dr. Morris, 
one of the annihilationist authors, says of the 
devil and his angels, "These wicked spirits 
are in the heavenlies as in their province, 
the possession and occupancy of which they 
are yet permitted of God to retain." And 
he gives us an alarming idea of the activities 
and powers of the prince of evil spirits. He 
says : " As men in general have little or no 
conception of the moral power of Satan for 
evil, so have they no adequate conception of 
his intellectual and physical power for mis- 
chief on the earth. . . . He is independent 
of all mechanical contrivances and chemical 
appliances. . . . And by his own mere mental 
confidence, whenever God permits him, Satan 
can subordinate the laws and apply the forces 
of electricity and meteorology, and can change 
the condition of animal chemistry, and can 
cause muscular contraction," etc. He extols 
"Satan's proficiency in mental and moral 
science," as evinced in the experimental his- 
tory of the saints of God, in all the tempta- 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. Ill 



tions which they endure. He tells us : ""There 
is no reason for believing that the presence 
of demons in the midst of human society is 
more restricted, or that their evil power is 
less active, now than in the days of the Son 
of man and of his apostles. . . . Men have 
little or no conception of the intelligence and 
power of demons, who can not only afflict and 
torture men through the corporeal organism, 
but can form a superhuman and spiritual 
amalgam (so to speak) with the souls of men. 
They are spirits, evil spirits, and seven of 
them, yea, many of them, can thus combine 
with one human soul," * etc. 

It is, then, admitted that one of the most 
familiar truths in the Scriptures is the exist- 
ence, the immense activity and power of 
spirits. But if angels and evil spirits not 
only possess a conscious existence, but put 
forth incessant activities without material 
bodies, if they can act either through the 
human body or without any body, there 
* " Quest, of Ages," pp. 70-73. 



112 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



can be nothing improbable in the doctrine 
that the spirits of men, good and bad, when 
released from their bodies, will be equally 
active. Nay, the fact that disembodied spirits 
do live and act compels the conclusion, un- 
less there be positive evidence to the contrary, 
that the spirits of men will also live and act 
out of the body. Accordingly, the inspired 
writers speak as familiarly of being out of 
the body as of being in it, of being absent 
from the body as of being present in it, of 
putting off their tabernacle, the body, as of 
putting off their garments. 

III. The doctrine that the soul survives 
the body and possesses a conscious existence, 
happy or unhappy, between death and the 
resurrection, is clearly established, as we be- 
lieve, by a comparison of the different classes 
of passages in the Scriptures bearing on this 
point. We have no hesitation in admitting 
that there are many passages which, if they are 
to be taken as teaching all that is true of the 
nature and destiny of man, do support the 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 113 



doctrine that the soul as well as the" body- 
dies. Nay ; they teach more than this, viz. : 
that death is the final end of man, and that 
he is to have no future. Besides the sentence 
pronounced on Adam (Gen. iii. 19), such 
passages as the following are adduced as 
proving that the soul dies with the body : 
" For in death there is no remembrance of 
thee : in the grave who shall give thee 
thanks V 9 " Wilt thou show wonders to the 
dead? shall the dead arise and praise thee?" 
u The dead praise not the Lord, neither any 
that go down into silence." u Put not your 
trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in 
whom there is no help. His breath goeth 
forth, he returneth to his earth, in that very 
day his thoughts perish." " For the living 
know that they shall die, but the dead know 
not anything, neither have they any more a 
reward ; for the memory of them is forgotten." 
" For the grave cannot praise thee, death can- 
not celebrate thee: they that go down into 
the pit cannot hope for thy truth. The liv- 



114 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



ing, the living, he shall praise thee as I do 
this day." " If I wait, the grave is mine 
house. I have made my bed in the darkness. 
I have sa id to corruption, Thou art my fa- 
ther ; to the worm, Thou art my mother and 
my sister. And where now is my hope? as 
for my hope, who shall see it ?" * 

It is readily admitted that these passages 
favor the doctrine they are cited to prove, if 
they reveal all that is true of the state of the 
dead ; but, as just remarked, it must also be 
noted that some of them, thus understood, 
prove a great deal more than the annihila- 
tionists believe. They prove that death is 
the final end of man's being — it is his utter 
destruction. Take, for example, the language 
of Job : " The grave is mine house," i. e., 
my final abode. " I have said to corruption, 
Thou art my father ; to the worm, Thou art 
my mother and my sister," i. e., I have no 

* Ps. vi. 5 ; Ps. xxxviii. 10 ; Ps. cxv. 17 ; Ps. cxlvi. 
3, 4; Eccles. ix. 5 ; 6, 10 ; Isa. xxxviii. 18, 19 ; Job xvii. 
13, 15. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 115 



more a future to hope for than corruption 
and the worm. "And where now is my 
hope?" The language, taken by itself, ex- 
presses in the strongest manner the dying 
out of hope — the blasting of all prospects for 
the future. Is this, it may be asked, the 
language of one who has the hope of a glori- 
ous resurrection and of eternal bliss ? And 
why all this gloomy talk about corruption 
and the worm, when, as the annihilationists 
insist, the resurrection will appear to be but 
a moment after death? — when, as they say, 
Paul desired to die because he would seem to 
be with Christ immediately?* In not one of 
these passages is there the slightest intima- 
tion that there is to be a resurrection, or that 
man has a future to hope for. Why, then, 
do not the advocates of the mortality of the 
soul go farther, and infer from these passages 
that death is the end of man? Do they not 
insist that death is the final extinction of the 
beasts, and does not Solomon put man on a level 
* "Debt and Grace," pp. 260, 261. 

10* 



116 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 

with the beasts ? "For that which befalleth the 
sons of men befalleth beasts ; even one thing be- 
falleth them : as one dieth, so dieth the other; 
yea, they have all one breath, so that a man 
hath no pre-eminence above a beast; for all is 
vanity."* How, then, do these men escape 
the conclusion that death is the end of man ? — 
that there is for him no eternal future ? They 
must take the ground that these passages do 
not teach the whole truth respecting man — that 
we cannot conclude from them that man 
finally perishes in the grave — since there are 
other portions of Scripture which teach the 
doctrine of the resurrection. And this is the 
true ground. It is absurd to attempt to de- 
termine the nature of the destiny of man from 
any one text or any one class of texts. If 
we would learn the truth concerning the 
nature of man and concerning his destiny, 
S we must collect all that the Scriptures say of 
him. The inspired writers sometimes dwell 
upon the frailty, the vanity, the worthlessness 
* Eccles, iii. 19. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 117 



of man, as when he is compared to "grass- 
hoppers and worms. At other times they 
magnify his importance and dignity as bear- 
ing the image of God — as being " the image 
and glory of God." At one time they con- 
template the death of man as the termination 
of all his thoughts, plans and hopes, and their 
minds dwell upon the silence and the dark- 
ness of the grave. At another they fix their 
attention upon the soul, its high destiny and 
its glorious or awful future, and then they 
tell us distinctly that when the dust returns 
to the earth as it was, the spirit returns to 
God who gave it — that the dead who have 
died in the Lord are now blessed, resting 
from their labors. The truth respecting man 
is to be learned from all these classes of texts, 
not from any one of them alone. 

It is in this way we become acquainted with 
the character of Christ, and it is by adopt- 
ing the course pursued by annihilationists 
that Unitarians prove him to be a creature. 
Is he not again and again called a man, a 



118 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



man of sorrows, the Son of man ? Does he 
not say expressly, "My Father is greater 
than I " ? Let us take such texts as these 
as teaching the whole truth respecting the 
character of Christ, and we prove him a 
mere man. But we say to Unitarians : These 
passages, it is true, teach that Christ is a 
man, and that there is a sense in which the 
Father is greater than he, but there are other 
passages in which he is declared to be God — 
to be equal with God. There must, therefore, 
be a sense in which he is truly God as well 
as a sense in which he is truly man. The 
only legitimate conclusion from a comparison 
of all the texts is that he possesses two 
natures, human and divine, and that, viewed 
as man, he is inferior to the Father, viewed 
as God, he is equal with the Father. 

Precisely thus we ascertain w r hat is the 
nature and what the destiny of man. We 
read that he is dust, and at death returns to 
dust. We also read that he has a spirit 
which is not dust, and does not return to 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 119 



the earth. We read that he sleeps ail un- 
conscious in the grave. We also read that 
when the body is killed or dies the soul is 
not killed, but still lives. "We read of men 
dying, and being buried, and seeing corrup- 
tion. We also read that at death they are 
absent from the body, and, if righteous, are 
present with the Lord. Nbw, we know that 
what each of these passages teaches is true, 
and we know that they do not contradict 
each other. How shall we reconcile them? 
Simply by noticing the plain fact that one 
class of texts speak of the present life, its 
works, hopes, sorrows and joys ; another class 
speak of the future life. One class of texts 
have reference to man's material nature and 
its destiny ; the other, to his spiritual nature 
and its destiny. 

And this method of interpretation is in 
accordance with universal usage. The most 
earnest advocates of the immortality of the 
soul say of a man, He died and was buried, 
and yet they do not believe the soul died 



120 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



or was buried. All persons say a man was 
wounded and a man was grieved. No one 
misunderstands such language. All under- 
stand that it is the body that was wounded, 
the soul that grieved. Believers in the im- 
mortality of the soul have never hesitated to 
say that man is mortal, and that man is im- 
mortal. Man is a complex being. His two 
natures possess opposite qualities, and conse- 
quently opposite things are affirmed of them. 
He now lives in one state, he is destined 
soon to live in another ; and widely different 
affirmations are made respecting these widely 
different states. 

Let us now try to determine, by a candid 
comparison of the different classes of Scrip- 
ture passages which treat of the nature and 
destiny of fallen man, whether the sentence 
of death pronounced on Adam doomed his 
soul and the souls of his posterity to a state 
of unconsciousness at the death of the body, 
or whether the Scriptures teach that the soul 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 121 



has a conscious existence between death and 
the resurrection. 

1. Happily we have an inspired explana- 
tion of that sentence. Solomon has told us 
what takes place at death. " Then shall the 
dust return to the earth as it was, and the 
spirit shall return unto God who gave it." * 
From this inspired statement we learn two 
most important truths: 

1st. That man is not wholly from the dust, 
that only one of his natures is derived from 
the earth, the other, directly from God. At 
death the dust — that part of man which was 
taken from the ground — returns to the earth 
as it was; but the spirit — the soul — not being 
from the dust, does not go to the earth, but 
returns to God, by whom it was given. How 
completely Solomon's explanation of death 
annihilates the learned criticisms on the 
Hebrew " Gah-phar — elemental atoms" by 
which the attempt is made to prove that 
man, body and soul, is formed of the dust 
* Eccles. xii. 7. 



122 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



and must again become dust! Solomon 
teaches us that man has two natures, is com- 
posed of two different substances, matter and 
spirit 

2d. The second truth taught in the passage 
under consideration is, that death does not 
take both body and soul into the grave, but 
only severs the mysterious tie which has 
bound them together, that the spirit, the 
soul, may return to God, to give account of 
the deeds done in the body. It is absolutely 
certain, therefore, that the soul, instead of 
sleeping in unconsciousness in the grave, 
passes into another state of conscious exist- 
ence. 

The obvious meaning of this Scripture is 
evaded, however, by making the Hebrew 
word translated spirit signify breath. Says 
one of our authors : " If this breath, as drawn 
from the surrounding atmosphere, may be 
said to come from God or be given by God, 
with the same propriety may it be said, when 
it leaves the body at death, to return to 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 123 



him." * It almost seems like trifling to ex- 
pose such a criticism. Three considerations 
will show the absurdity of it. The first is, 
that the word translated spirit (ruah) is the 
Hebrew word constantly used to signify the 
Spirit of God and the spirit of man. It is, 
therefore, the very word which Solomon, 
speaking of the soul as spirit, would employ. 
Secondly, in no part of the Scriptures do we 
find the body of man placed in contrast with 
his breath. This w r riter, who abounds, on 
other occasions, in references to what he con- 
siders parallel passages, attempts no such 
reference here. Thirdly, in what possible 
sense can it be said that the last breath of a 
dying man returns to God any more than 
any other breath he ever drew? But lan- 
guage in the hands of such critics means just 
what they choose to make it mean. 

Another writer of the same creed declines 
to say that in this instance the word ruah 
means breath, but he thinks " it may be used 
* " Mortal or Immortal," pp. 40, 41. 



124 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



to signify the motion of the soul in passing 
away, and passing into the custody of God." 
To sustain this singular notion, he gives us a 
curious criticism. The Hebrew word ruah, 
and the corresponding Greek word pneuma, 
he informs us, mean spirit when applied 
to God, and also to those born of God. 
"But to man as man the word i spirit/ 
in every department of Holy Scripture, is 
used adjectively, as signifying only the mo- 
tions and emotions of the soul." * This as- 
sertion is made for the purpose of escaping 
the truth that the human soul is spirit. It 
would certainly have been expedient to ac- 
company a statement so extraordinary and so 
important with some sort of proof, but noth- 
ing of the kind is attempted. The statement 
is untrue, and is absurd. In Numbers xvi. 
22, Moses and Aaron are said to have prayed 
thus : " O God, the God of the spirits of all 
flesh," etc. . What sense would the language 
make if we should understand the word 
* " Quest, of Ages," pp. 18, 19. 



IMMOETALITY OF THE SOUL. 125 



spirits here to mean "the motions and emo- 
tions " of all flesh ? Zechariah speaks of God 
as Him that "forineth the spirit of man within 
him." * Shall we read the passage thus : 
"That formeth 'the motions and emotions ' 
of man within him"? And in the passage 
under examination, if the word ruah means 
motion, what word in the sentence expresses 
the thing that moves ? 

There is no mistaking the real meaning of 
the passage. Man, it teaches us, is a complex 
being. His body is formed from the earth, 
and at death the dust — the material organism 
— returns to the earth as it was. But his 
soul is not formed of dust — it is not matter, 
but spirit — and, therefore, it does not go to the 
earth, but to God who gave it. The soul, 
consequently, survives the body, and is in- 
troduced by death into another state of con- 
scious existence. 

2. Our Saviour taught the same doctrine 
in language too clear to be misunderstood; 
'* Zech. xii. 1. 



126 IM MORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 

when sending forth his disciples on their 
perilous mission, he said to them : " Fear not 
them which kill the body, but are not able to 
kill the soul."* The doctrine we are oppos- 
ing is that the soul dies with the body, being 
incapable of a conscious existence without it. 
If this be true, it is certain that he who kills 
the body does by that very act kill the soul 
also. He kills the soul as truly as he kills the 
body. But our Lord teaches that, although 
men may kill the body, they cannot kill the 
soul. It is therefore certain that the soul 
survives the body: death merely severs the 
tie that binds soul and body together, and 
the soul still lives. 

Here, again, we have the usual resort to un- 
sound criticism. " We must take into con- 
sideration," says one writer, "that the word 
here rendered soul is pseuche, a word forty 
times rendered life in the New Testament." f 
And so he would translate it here. The pas- 
* Matt. x. 28. 

f " Mortal or Immortal/' pp. 41, 42. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 127 

sage would then read thus : "Fear not "them 
which kill the body, but are not able to kill 
the life" This sounds strangely. To kill is 
to destroy life, and how the body could be 
killed and the life remain unharmed is not 
quite clear, to say nothing of the very extra- 
ordinary phrase, to hill life. But our author 
interprets the passage thus : " We are not to 
fear them which can kill the body, or can de- 
prive us of our brief space of life here, but 
cannot touch that life which is hid w T ith Christ 
in God which will be bestowed upon us when 
our great Lifegiver shall appear" — that is, 
at the resurrection. According to this inter- 
pretation, the word body signifies " our brief 
space of life here" — a very extraordinary 
meaning certainly — and the word life or soul 
signifies the life which the body or person 
will have when raised from the dead at a 
future period — also a most extraordinary 
meaning. He refers, in justification of his 
most extraordinary criticism, to Matt. x. 39 : 
u He that findeth his life shall lose it ; and 



128 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



he that loseth his life for my sake shall find 
it." But here the antithesis is between life 
and life, making it obvious that the present 
life is meant in the one case and the future 
life in the other. But in the passage before 
us the antithesis is not between life and life, 
but between soul and body. This manifestly 
incorrect interpretation is exposed by another 
writer of the same faith thus : " And Christ 
speaks of man as able to kill the body, but 
not the soul (Matt. x. 28 ; Luke xii. 5), 
where the use of the word life instead of soul 
explains nothing, for in the death of the 
body the life is, in fact, destroyed. Nor will 
it meet the difficulty to say that man can de- 
stroy the life only temporarily, while God 
can destroy it eternally, for the same is true 
of the body, and the words of Christ make 
. the distinction, not between the temporary 
and the eternal, but between the body and 
the soul. Nor can the word here rendered 
soul be taken as referring to the future, eter- 
nal life of the believer, as when it is said that 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 129 

his 1 life is hid with Christ in God/ for this 
sense of the word life is altogether different, 
as the fact of life and the principle of life are 
different ideas/' * etc. 

It is certain, then, that the soul does not 
die with the body, but continues to live. It 
is not unconscious between death and the res- 
urrection. It lives in a happy or an un- 
happy state. 

3. It is certain that the Apostle Paul be- 
lieved that the soul may live out of the 
body. Speaking of the wonderful revelations 
vouchsafed to him, he says : " I knew a man 
in Christ above fourteen years ago (whether 
in the body, I cannot tell ; whether out of 
the body, I cannot tell : God knoweth) ; such 
a one caught up to the third heaven. And 
I knew such a man (whether in the body or 
out of the body, I cannot tell : God knoweth), 
how that he was caught up into Paradise, 
and heard unspeakable words which it is not 
lawful for a man to utter." f Paul knew 
* " Debt and Grace/' p. 252. f 2 Cor. xii. 2, 3. 



130 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 

that he had been caught up to heaven, where 
he heard unspeakable words, but he did not 
know whether he was taken up soul and 
body, or whether his soul w^as, for the time, 
separated from the body. Now, if he had 
believed, with the annihilationists, that the 
soul can have no conscious existence out of 
the body, he could have had no doubt on the 
subject. It is certain, therefore, that he was 
a believer in the immortality of the soul. 

But it is objected that, according to this 
view, Paul must have died and had a resur- 
rection. Suppose it was so : did not Lazarus 
die and rise again ? But it cannot be proved 
that the soul may not be separated from the 
body temporarily without the extinction of 
the natural life. The objection, then, is with- 
out force. We are told, indeed, that " all the 
apostle means by the phrase [ out of the body ' 
is merely to be in vision," * but such an as- 
sertion, made in utter disregard of the lan- 
guage of the apostle, is worthy of notice only 
* " Mortal or Immortal," p. 62. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 131 

as it shows how glaringly the Scriptures" must 
be perverted in the advocacy of the doctrine 
of the mortality of the soul. Others had 
visions, but were never said to be out of 
the body. 

4. Whilst the doctrine is taught, with en- 
tire clearness, that the souls of all men live 
after the death of their bodies, the state of 
the righteous after death is more frequently 
brought to view. TTe propose now to ex- 
amine what we find in the New Testament 
on this point. 

1st. Three of the evangelists record the 
appearance of Moses and Elias on the Mount 
of Transfiguration with our Lord. Luke re- 
cords it thus : " And behold, there talked with 
him two men, which were Moses and Elias, 
who appeared in glory, and spake of his de- 
cease, which he should accomplish at Jeru- 
salem." * Neither of the narratives leaves 
any ground to doubt the actual presence of 
those two servants of God in the mount. 
* Luke ix. 30, 31. 



132 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



Elias was translated, body and soul, to hea- 
ven, but Moses died and his body was buried, 
yet the appearance of both is recorded, as if 
there were nothing more remarkable in the 
one case than in the other. It is clear, then, 
that Moses lived in heaven after the death 
of his body. Dr. Clarke, it is true, expressed 
the opinion that "the body of Moses was 
probably raised again as a pledge of the 
resurrection," but since there is not a word 
in the Bible countenancing the idea, it cannot 
be probable. There is really no more diffi- 
culty about the appearance of Moses than 
about the appearance of angels, of which we 
so often read in both the Old and New Testa- 
ments; for the angels are "all ministering 
spirits," as the saints are "the spirits of just 
men made perfect." 

2d. The answer of our Lord to the prayer 
of the dying thief establishes the same doc- 
trine. " Lord, remember me," he prayed, 
" when thou comest into thy kingdom." 
The answer was : " Verily I say unto thee, 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



133 



To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise/' * 
We need not stop to inquire whether in this 
passage Paradise means heaven. It was cer- 
tainly a place of happiness, and to that place 
the soul of the dying thief was to go imme- 
diately after death. His body died, and his 
soul entered Paradise. But there is a diffi- 
culty, we are told, u that lies like a mountain 
barrier" in the way of this understanding of 
our Saviour's language, viz. : that he said, 
three days after he made this promise, that 
he had not yet ascended to the Father. John 
xx. 17. This difficulty wholly disappears 
when we remember that, although the human 
nature of Christ is finite, and might not have 
ascended to heaven on that day, yet his divine 
nature is infinite, and was in heaven. There 
is no more difficulty, even supposing the ob- 
jector rightly understands John xx. 17, than 
there is in the language of our Lord in John 
iii. 13: "And no man hath ascended up to 
heaven, but he that came down from heaven, 
* Luke xxiii. 43. 



134 IaDIOBTALITY of the soul. 



even the Son of man, which is in heaven." 
He here claims to be at the same moment 
both on earth and in heaven, j 

An attempt is made to evade the force of 
the argument by a change in the punctuation, 
so as to make our Saviour's language read 
thus : " Verily I say unto thee to-day, Thou 
shall be with me in Paradise." The meaning 
then would be, not that the thief would be 
with him in Paradise on that day, but " I to- 
day say unto thee/' etc. Whilst it is, of 
course, admitted that our punctuation is not 
of authority, yet we do maintain that the 
order in which the words stand proves the 
punctuation correct. Xo reason, it is be- 
lieved, con be given to justify the change in 
the punctuation. Reference is made to Zech. 
ix. 12 as containing "an expression exactly 
parallel with that in Luke." It reads thus : 
" Turn you to the strong hold, ye prisoners 
of hope : even to-day do I declare that I will 
render double unto thee." But this is not a 
parallel case at all, for here the emphatic ex- 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



135 



pression to-day precedes the phrase I declare, 
and no one can mistake the meaning. But 
in the answer of our Lord to the thief, the 
word to-day does not precede but follows 
the words " I say unto thee," thus giving 
a totally different sense. The objector says : 
" Transposing this sentence without altering 
the sense, and we have phraseology similar 
to that of Luke xxiii. 43. " * But you can- 
not transpose the sentence without altering 
the sense, for the order of the words deter- 
mines the sense. So that, whilst all agree as 
to the meaning of the phraseology in Zech. 
ix. 12, no respectable commentator or critic, 
so far as we know, has understood our Lord's 
language in the same way. The learned 
Quinoel, referring to the interpretation we 
are opposing, says it renders the sentence 
satis frigida, sufficiently frigid, and "the very 
order of the words and the formula, Verily 
I say unto thee, repudiate this conjecture." f 

* * Mortal or Immortal," pp. 54-57. 

f "Ita vero procederet sententia satis frigida ; et ipse 
12 



136 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



All such attempts to force an unnatural mean- 
ing upon the language of Jesus only serve to 
confirm the obvious interpretation. This one 
passage, were there no other, is fatal to the 
doctrine of the mortality and unconscious 
sleep of the soul, as it is cheering to the 
heart of the true believer. 

3d. The dying prayer of Stephen, the first 
Christian martyr, is a further refutation of 
the doctrines under consideration, and a fur- 
ther confirmation of the doctrine of the im- 
mortality of the soul. "And they stoned 
Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord 
Jesus, receive my spirit."* His body was 
about to return to the earth as it was; his 
spirit he committed into the hands of that 

verborum ordo, atque formula afirjv 7eyu ooi 3 banc con- 
jecturam repudiant." In loco. 

"But the sublime promise of Christ: afiijv teya coi } 
crjuepov 'fiei* kfiov earj kv ru TzapadeLGu, verily I say unto thee, 
to-day, etc., has been superficialized to such a degree by 
some that they render the words thus: 'I to-day' say 
unto thee," etc. — Olshausen. 

* Acts vii. 59. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 137 

Saviour for whose truth and glory he was 
laying down his life. There could be no 
meaning in this dying prayer if his spirit 
was about to die with the body, and both to 
sleep in "the dust till the resurrection." 

But this clear and beautiful petition, like 
so many other inspired utterances, is to be 
perverted and obscured by reckless criticism. 
The word pneuma sometimes, though rarely, 
signifies " the principle of life residing in the 
breath," and this, we are told, is what Ste- 
phen commended to God, to be bestowed 
upon him again. His life was about to be- 
come extinct, and yet we are to believe that 
he asked Jesus to receive that which would no 
longer exist! And then the prayer, "Re- 
ceive my spirit" means, " Raise my body, 
my person, to life at the time of the resur- 
rection !" Is it really necessary to expose 
such a perversion? "But if the soul lives 
right along in one uninterrupted course of 
existence, where," it is asked, " would be the 
propriety of committing it, at the hour of 



138 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



death, into the hands of our Maker any more 
than at any other time ?" * Suppose there 
were no more propriety in committing the 
soul to God at the hour of death than at 
any other time, it will scarcely be pretended 
that there is any less propriety in so doing at 
so solemn a moment than at any other. Now, 
since there is eminent propriety in commit- 
ting one's self to God's keeping at all times, 
there surely was eminent propriety in Ste- 
phen's doing so when dying. But death is 
the close of man's probation, and " after 
death the judgment." Is it not pre-eminently 
proper that the dying servant of God, about 
to close his probation and to render to God 
an account of the deeds done in the body, 
should commit his soul to that Saviour in 
whom he trusts, and who only can secure to 
him an entrance into heaven? And is not 
such a prayer the expression of the earnest 
longing of the dying believer to go and be 
with his Lord and Saviour, " whom having 
* " Mortal and Immortal," pp. 57, 58. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 139 



not seen he loves " ? Did not our Saviour 
himself, in the very same language, commit 
his spirit, when he wm dying, into the hands 
of his Father? And will it be pretended 
that his spirit did not continue to live after 
the death of his body ? 

It is, then, the inestimable privilege of the 
believer, when flesh and heart fail, to com- 
mit his soul to Him who is the strength of his 
heart and his portion for ever. It is a pre- 
cious truth, worth more than all the treasures 
of earth, that Jesus does receive to himself 
the souls of his people when they are no 
longer in the body. How many thousands 
have sweetly fallen asleep in Christ with this 
prayer on their lips ! 

4th. Such was the confidence of the apostles 
and primitive Christians that immediately 
after death they would be happy in the pres- 
ence of their Saviour that they were not 
only willing but anxious to die. " There- 
fore," says Paul, " we are always confident, 

knowing that whilst we are at home in the 
12* 



140 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



body we are absent from the Lord. (For we 
walk by faith, not by sight.) We are confi- 
dent, I say, and willing rather to be absent 
from the body, and to be present with the 
Lord." * The apostle scarcely regarded his 
body as part of himself, much less as essential 
to his conscious existence. He speaks of be- 
ing at home in the body, or absent from it, 
as one would speak of being in or out of his 
house. In the same manner Peter speaks 
of his body as u this tabernacle," which he 
must soon lay aside. f Such language could 
never have been used by men who believed 
either that man is a mere material organism, 
or that the soul cannot survive separation 
from the body, or exist consciously in a sep- 
arate state. 

Believers, as Paul here teaches, enjoy "the 
earnest of the Spirit." In consequence of 
this, they have an abiding confidence of ac- 
ceptance with God. And knowing that, so 
long as they continue in the body, they can- 
* 2 Cor. t. 6-8. f 2 Peter i. 14. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 141 



not hope to enjoy the immediate and "blissful 
presence of their Redeemer and God, they 
prefer to leave the body, assured that im- 
mediately after death they will be present 
with him. There is no ambiguity in the 
apostle's language. It is impossible to doubt, 
if we are willing to take the plain meaning 
of the clearest language, that the death of 
believers — their absence from the body — in- 
troduces them immediately into the pres- 
ence of God, where "there is fullness of 

joy-" 

On reading such language one would sup- 
pose that no believer in the inspiration of 
the Scriptures would ever doubt that the soul 
lives after the death of the body, and that 
the soul of the believer enjoys a blessed ex- 
istence. But it is said, by way of objection, 
that when Paul says he is willing rather to 
be absent from the body, and to be present 
with the Lord, "it is certain that his thoughts 
do not linger in the intermediate state, as if 
that were to be much prized. He imme- 



142 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



diately speaks of the scene of judgment."* 
Is it true, then, that we are to judge of the 
estimate an inspired writer places upon any 
of the blessings of redemption by the num- 
ber of words or sentences he writes about 
them in any particular chapter ? Why did not 
this writer conclude that the apostle did not 
regard "the scene of judgment" as a matter 
of much importance because he immediately 
passes to other subjects ? The question, how- 
ever, is not hotv much, comparatively, the apos- 
tle prized the intermediate state, but what he 
meant by being absent from the body, and pres- 
ent with the Lord. This the writer just quoted 
interprets thus : " The phrase, ' To be absent 
from the body/ may therefore denote, not the 
happiness of a disembodied state, but a re- 
lease from the suffering and dying body, 
either to 6 sleep in Jesus/ or to be present 
with Christ in the glorified body of the res- 
urrection." Let us examine this interpre- 
tation. 

* " Debt and Grace," pp. 255, 256. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 143 



1. In the first place, the writer himself is 
evidently in doubt respecting the meaning of 
the language he is trying to interpret for the 
instruction of his readers. He does not pre- 
tend to tell us what the apostle does mean, 
but only what he may mean. As remarked 
in a preceding part of this work, this method 
of argument, if such it may be called, is 
eminently characteristic of the advocates of 
the mortality of the soul. There are a num- 
ber of passages of Scripture which have been 
almost universally understood by the ablest 
interpreters, and by the wisest and best men, 
to teach the immortality of the soul. If the 
doctrine is not true, these passages have been 
greatly misunderstood. They certainly have 
some meaning. TTe ask earnestly, What do 
they mean ? AVe are answered by these men 
of extraordinary illumination, who undertake 
to revolutionize the faith of the Church of 
Christ, that they may mean this, or they may 
mean that But we are not satisfied with 
such answers respecting language which seems 



144 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



plain and treats of a subject of absorbing 
interest. We ask not what meaning may- 
be forced upon it, but what does it mean? 
The phrases "absent from the body" and 
" present with the Lord" cannot be so incom- 
prehensible that sincere inquirers for the 
truth can only conjecture what they may 
mean. This method of dealing with such 
texts is one of the evidences that these men 
are fighting against truth instead of bringing 
it to light. 

2. The language of Paul, we are told, may 
mean either of two things as wide apart as 
the poles. It may, first, mean a release from 
the suffering and dying body to sleep in Jesus 
— that is, to lie in a state of death or uncon- 
sciousness. If this is the meaning, then the 
apostle's desire was simply to escape from 
bodily suffering, and for this end he would 
gladly pass into an unconscious state, and for 
the time cease to be. The sentiment is not 
only unchristian, but unmanly and degrad- 
ing; and Paul could no more have uttered 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 145 

it than he could have committed suicide. 
Moreover, it is a desire which no human be- 
ing ever felt, unless under extreme distress 
or in utter despair. But Paul was not only 
doing a great work for Christ and for the 
salvation of his fellow-men, but, in spite of 
all his trials and tribulations, he enjoyed 
great happiness in his work, in communion 
with his Saviour and in hope of heaven. 
He had even learned to "joy in tribulation." 
Why, then, should he long to lie in the grave 
in utter unconsciousness ? But if being ab- 
sent from the body was unconscious sleep, 
what did he mean by being present with the 
Lord ? for the two things stand in imme- 
diate connection. When absent from the 
body he would be present with the Lord. 
What does this mean ? 

Secondly. The apostle's language, we are 
told, may mean " to be present with Christ 
in the glorified body of the resurrection-" 
But this sounds strangely. He desired to be 
absent from the body and to be present in his 



146 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



glorified body. But it must be very per- 
plexing to determine how he could be absent 
from his body and yet be in his body raised 
from the grave. 

But it really seems like trifling to spend 
time in exposing such absurdities. It is as 
clear as light that Paul had in his mind two 
widely different states in which he might 
be — viz., in the body and out of the body. 
Whilst living he was in the body ; if he 
should die he would be out of the body. He 
preferred to be out of the body. Why ? Xot 
because death was in itself a good, or because 
a disembodied state is in itself preferable 
to the union of soul and body, but because he 
had an intense desire to be " present with' 
the Lord" — a privilege he could not enjoy"" 
whilst living in the body, but which he w T ould 
enjoy so soon as he died and was out of the 
body. Thus is the doctrine proved beyond 
cavil that the souls of believers are immortal, 
and do enjoy a conscious and happy existence 
between death and the resurrection. 



I1DI0RTALITY OF THE SOUL. 147 



5th. In laneua^e somewhat different, but 
equally unambiguous, Paul teaches the same 
doctrine in the Epistle to the Philippians.* 
He expresses his earnest desire that Christ 
might be magnified in his body, whether by 
life or by death, and then he says, " For me to 
live is Christ, and to die is gain." To live 
would be to the honor of Christ, inasmuch 
as his cause would be promoted by his min- 
istry. To die would be gain to himself, inas- 
much as he would rest from his labors and 
enjoy the blessedness of heaven. Here again 
we meet w T ith the kind of criticism so cha- 
racteristic of the advocates of the mortality 
of the soul. " When he then adds, ' to live 
is Christ, and to die is gain/ he may signify 
either the gain to the cause of Christ by 
the martyrdom which in his person he now 
awaited, or his own greater reward as a mar- 
tyr in the resurrection." f That is, we are 
told that the apostle may mean either of two 
totally different things, but what he does 

* Phil. i. 20-23. f " Debt and Grace," pp. 256, 257. 
13 



148 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



mean we are not informed. But Paul ex- 
plains his meaning, so that we are not left in 
doubt. He says : " But if I live in the flesh, 
this is the fruit of my labor, yet what I shall 
choose, I wot not. For I am in a strait be- 
twixt two, having a desire to depart and to 
be with Christ, which is far better. Never- 
theless, to abide in the flesh is more needful 
for you." Here observe : 

1. The question in his mind was between 
abiding in the flesh and departing from it. 
Not a doubt entered his mind that he might 
depart from the body as well as continue in 
it. He evidently did not believe in the doc- 
trine that the soul cannot have a conscious 
existence out of the body. 

2. His desire to depart from the flesh was 
not that he might be relieved from the suffer- 
ings he was called to endure. One of the 
annihilationist authors tells us that "such 
were his present afflictions that any form of 
death would be a welcome release." But, as 
already remarked, Paul was far from being 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 149 

unhappy. On the contrary } he not only pos- 
sessed that elevated joy which true religion 
never fails to bring to the faithful Christian, 
especially in times of trial, but he rejoiced to 
see " that the things which happened to him 
had fallen out rather unto the furtherance of 
the gospel." 

3. But his desire to depart was that he 
miglit be mth Christ, which he knew to be far 
better than anything this earth can afford. 
To die would be to him great gain, because 
he would be immediately with Christ. But 
if it be true that the soul lies in an uncon- 
scious state from death to the resurrection, 
what would Paul have gained by dying 
speedily? How could he have been with 
Christ any sooner than if he had lived on 
earth a thousand years? "Measuring the 
time absolutely," says one of our annihila- 
tionist authors, "he could not, to be sure, 
but measuring it by his consciousness (his only 
means of measurement), and he could just as 
much sooner as what time elapsed between 



150 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



the penning of that sentence and the day of 
his death." * The idea on which these wri- 
ters insist is, that to one in an unconscious 
state the interval between death and the 
resurrection, though of a thousand or ten 
thousand years' duration, is no more than a 
moment. " The long and dreary interval, 
then, between death and the day of judg- 
ment (supposing the intermediate state to be 
a profound sleep) does not exist at all, ex- 
cept in the imagination. To the party con- 
cerned there is no interval whatever, but to 
each person (according to this supposition) 
the moment of his closing his eyes in death 
will be instantly succeeded by the sound of 
the last trumpet which shall summon the 
dead, even though ages shall have inter- 
vened." f All this is doubtless true, and it 
would be just the same on the supposition 
that a hundred millions of years elapse be- 
tween death and the resurrection; but it does 

* " Mortal or Immortal," p. 65. 

f Whateley, " On Future State," pp. 83, 84. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



151 



not at all meet the case. We are trying to 
ascertain why the apostle desired to die ra- 
ther than to live longer. The reason he as- 
signs is, that he desired to be with Christ. 
Beyond a question, then, he expected to be 
with Christ sooner if he died sooner. He 
expected to be with Christ as soon as he de- 
parted from the flesh. But according to the 
doctrine we are opposing, he would be with 
Christ just as soon if he lived on earth till 
the end of time as if he died immediately. 
Now, let us see what, according to this doc- 
trine, would have been Paul's gain by an 
early death. Let us suppose that, in accord- 
ance with his desire, he had died twenty years 
sooner than in the course of nature he must 
have died. What would he have gained? 
He would not have been one moment sooner 
with Christ, the object of his heart's desire. 
What, then, could he have gained? He 
would have gained twenty years of uncon- 
sciousness! This would have been precisely 

his gain, and the whole of it. What would 
13* 



152 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



he have lost ? He would have lost all his 
Christian usefulness and all his elevated 
Christian enjoyment during that period. So 
that, instead of the earnest desire of a holy 
man to be with his Saviour, where he could 
serve him in perfect holiness and enjoy his 
presence, we have the longing of a man weary 
of his work and impatient of his trials to 
pass into a state of insensibility ! Can any 
real Christian, looking at the matter fairly, 
bring himself to believe that such is the 
meaning of Paul's language ? 

Away with all such attempts to wrest the 
plain language of inspiration from its obvious 
meaning, and thus to wrest from the believer 
his glorious hopes ! Paul knew that he would 
be with Christ in glory as soon as he left 
the body. Therefore it was that he pre- 
ferred to depart. The doctrine is, therefore, 
true that the soul, instead of dying with the 
body, passes into another state of conscious 
existence, and the souls of believers go to 
their Redeemer. 



CHAPTEK VI. 



OPPOSING ARGUMENTS CONSIDERED. 

/^\XE of the most plausible arguments 
in favor of the doctrine of the uncon- 
sciousness of the soul between death and the 
resurrection is the fact that in the Scriptures 
death is represented as a sleep. This argu- 
ment is urged by Archbishop Whateley, who 
says : " The style in which the sacred writers 
usually speak of the deceased is as of per- 
sons who are asleep." But this argument 
seems to us to prove just the reverse of that 
which it is adduced to substantiate; for 
whilst it is true that in sleep the senses are 
closed and the body is almost unconscious, 
this is by no means true of the soul. As we 
have seen in a preceding part of this work, 
* there is no evidence that at any moment 
during the deepest sleep it is inactive or un- 

153 



154 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



conscious, and we do know that very often 
it is intensely active and its passions and 
emotions are profoundly stirred. There are 
examples of persons having solved math- 
ematical problems whilst asleep which they 
could not solve when awake. Others have 
composed music during sleep. Indeed, so 
far is it from being true that the soul is un- 
conscious in sleep, that God has chosen to 
make to his servants and to others some of 
his most important revelations in their dreams. 
The cases of Pharaoh and Xebuchadnezzar 
are in point, and it was by a warning con- 
veyed in a dream that the infant Saviour 
escaped the rage of Herod. "The angel 
of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, 
saying, Arise, and take the young child and 
his mother and flee into Egypt, and be thou 
there until I bring thee word ; for Herod 
will seek the young child to destroy him." 
Again, after the death of Herod, the angel 
appeared in a dream and bade Joseph re- 
turn into the land of Israel. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 155 



But whilst the soul is evidently "always 
active in sleep, and often most intensely ac- 
tive, it is true that it acts independently of 
the senses and the bodily organs. It sees 
without the eyes, hears without the ears, 
speaks without the tongue. Surely this ac- 
tivity, this intense consciousness of the soul, 
during the hours of sleep, can afford no proof 
of that blank unconsciousness, the absolute 
death of the soul, for which the advocates of 
its mortality contend. On the contrary, the 
clearest evidence is thus afforded that it can 
live and act without the use of the bodily 
organs. If, then, the inspired writers under- 
stood death to be the total unconsciousness 
of the body, whilst the soul continues con- 
scious and active, they could not employ a 
more suggestive figure than sleep. Those 
lines of Young are not only fine poetry, but, 
like so many of his verses, contain an un- 
answerable argument : 

"'Tis past conjecture, all things rise in proof; 
While o'er my limbs sleep's soft dominion spread, 



156 IMMOBTALXTY OF THE SOUL. 



What though iny soul fantastic measures trod 

O'er fairy fields, or mourn' d along the gloom 

Of pathless woods, or, down the craggy steep 

Hurl'd headlong, swam with pain the mantled pool, 

Or scal'd the cliff, or danc'd on hollow winds, 

With antic shapes, wild natives of the brain ? 

Her ceaseless flight, though devious, speaks her nature 

Of subtler essence than the trodden clod, 

Active, aerial, tow'ring, unconfin'd, 

Unfetter' d with her gross companion's fall. 

E'en silent night proclaims my soul immortal, 

E'en silent night proclaims eternal day. 

For human weal heaven husbands all events : 

Dull sleep instructs, nor sport vain dreams in vain." 

Death is represented as a sleep, doubtless, 
because it is not the destruction of the person 
for even a temporary period, the soul still 
living and acting, and because even the death 
of the body is to be temporary. The period 
of death is but a night ; God will, in due time, 
awaken the slumbering dust. " Our friend 
Lazarus sleepeth," said Jesus, " but I go, that 
I may awake him out of sleep." And so 
Daniel says of all the dead : " And many of 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



157 



them (or the multitude of them) that sleep in 
the dust of the earth shall awake." 

The two great events, the resurrection and 
a general judgment, it is well remarked, are 
" fixed facts." From these two great facts 
two arguments are offered to prove that the 
soul dies with the body. 

1. The first argument is stated thus: 
"What need is there of a resurrection if 
the man proper ceases not to exist at death, 
but lives on in a more enlarged and perfect 
sphere of consciousness and activity ? If the 
body is but a trammel, a clog, to the opera- 
tions of the soul, what need that it should 
come back and gather up its scattered parti- 
cles from the silent tomb ?" * This argument, 
if it deserves the name, is easily answered. 

In the first place, the body is not a mere 
trammel to the soul, a clog to its operations, 
but an organism without which its peculiar 
mission in this world could not be accom- 
plished. It becomes a clog only as it is 
* " Mortal or Immortal," p. 84. 



158 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



abused by unlawful indulgence, or as its 
powers decay under the sentence of death. 

In the second place, though the souls of 
the righteous do rise at death to a higher 
sphere of conscious activity, yet their bodies, 
as raised from the dead, may, and doubtless 
will, add greatly to their happiness and fit 
them for their peculiar mission in a brighter 
world. If it were admitted that since the 
introduction of sin and death into the world 
the body has become a clog to the soul, it 
would not follow that when purified and 
refined by the power of God at the resur- 
rection, it will continue to be so. " It is 
sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory ; it is 
sown in weakness, it is raised in power ; it is 
sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual 
body." "For this corruptible must put on 
incorruption, and this mortal must put on im- 
mortality." * For Jesus Christ " shall change 
our vile body, that it may be fashioned like 
unto his glorious body, according to the work- 
* 1 Cor. xv. 42-44, 53. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 159 



ing whereby he is able even to subdue all 
things unto himself." * Let it be admitted 
that u our vile body " is a clog to the soul : 
does it follow that our glorious body will 
be so ? As much more refined than the pres- 
ent body as light is more refined than the 
earth on which we tread, no longer possessing 
ensnaring appetites, no longer subject to dis- 
ease or decay, it will be a tabernacle suited 
to the work and the enjoyments of the sanc- 
tified spirit. Therefore the saints wait for 
" the redemption of their body." f 

Thus, moreover, it will appear that sin 
has triumphed over no part of man — that the 
w T hole man, body and soul, has been rescued 
by the Redeemer from its iron grasp. " So 
when this corruptible shall have put on in- 
corruption, and this mortal shall have put on 
immortality, then shall be brought to pass 
the saying that is written, Death is swallowed 
tip in victory. O Death, where is thy sting? 
O Grave, where is thy victory r'% 

* Phil. iii. 21. f ^m. viii. 23. % 1 Cor. xv. 54, 55. 
H 



160 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



Having answered the argument sought to 
be derived from the resurrection against the 
immortality of the soul, we now derive from 
this same doctrine an argument of great 
weight in favor of its immortality, viz. : that 
although the person is frequently said to die 
and to rise from the dead, yet the inspired 
writers repeatedly explain that it is only the 
body, net the soul, that is to be raised from 
the dead. Thus it is said that at the resur- 
rection of our Lord "the graves were opened, 
many dead bodies of the saints which slept 
arose, and came out of the graves."* Paul 
says : " If the Spirit of Him that raised up 
Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that 
raised up Christ from the dead shall also 
quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit 
that dwelleth in you."f And again: "Who 
shall change our vile body, that it may be 
fashioned like unto his glorious body."J Now, 
this language is perfectly intelligible and con- 
sistent on the* supposition that the soul sur- 
* Matt, xxvii. 52. f R ° m - viii. 11. t Phil. iii. 21. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 161 



vives the body, or passes into another state 
of conscious existence, but it is utterly un- 
accountable on the supposition that the 
whole man, soul and body, lies in the grave, 
and is raised from the dead. The Scriptures 
do constantly speak of both the soul and the 
body with reference to death and the future 
state, and they speak distinctly of the resur- 
rection of the body, but in not an instance do 
they mention the resurrection of the soul. 
Why is this ? It is the body, not the soul, 
that is to be quickened ; it is the body, not 
the soul, that is to be fashioned like unto the 
glorified body of Christ. The reason is ob- 
vious : it is the body, not the soul, that dies. 

2. The argument for the mortality of the 
soul derived from the general judgment is 
stated thus: "What propriety can there be 
in a general judgment at the last day, if those 
who pass from this state of existence enter 
immediately at death into happiness or misery, 
accordingly as their characters have been 
good or bad ? Is there possibility of mis- 



162 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



take in the decision passed upon some at death, 
and is it perhaps the case that some have 
been unjustly tormented in hell and others 
unworthily reveling in the bliss of heaven 
for ages past, so that there must needs be a 
general assize on the whole human race to 
correct these momentous errors of former 
decisions ? Such a view reflects on the cha- 
racter of the divine government."* This 
argument is founded on the supposition that 
a general judgment is necessary in order that 
God the Judge may ascertain accurately the 
true characters of individuals and assign 
them their proper place of happiness or 
punishment. But this is absurd. And may 
we not ask, if this is the true view, why there 
should be a general judgment at all, since it 
is certain that the all-wise Judge knows as 
well before as afterward the true character 
of every human being ? 

But suppose the general judgment designed 
to vindicate the divine administration of the 
* " Mortal or Immortal," pp. 84, 85. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 163 



affairs of this world before the intelligent 
universe, to glorify, in the highest degree, 
the Triune God, and to make a profound 
and happy moral impression upon men and 
angels. Such an object would constitute the 
reason why it is to occur at the end of the 
world, when the great plan shall have been 
completed and the grand results could be 
made manifest. Then, those parts of the di- 
vine procedure which have been too deep 
and too high for the comprehension of the 
wisest and best men, and which have led 
wicked men to blaspheme the name of God, 
will shine forth to the admiring joy of saints 
and angels, and to the confusion of the un- 
godly. 

This is the view constantly set forth in 
the Scriptures. The Apostle Paul teaches 
that the plan of salvation is developed 
" to the intent that now unto the principal- 
ities and powers in heavenly places might 
be known, by the church, the manifold 
wisdom of God, according to the eternal 



164 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesns 
our Lord." * But there are many things in 
this wonderful plan which, to the angels to 
whom the apostle refers, are vet profoundly 
mysterious, and which they cannot compre- 
hend, and " the manifold wisdom " of which 
they cannot see till it shall be completed. 
" Which things," says Peter, " the angels de- 
sire to look into." f Therefore the Psalmist, 
speaking of the general judgment, says : "He 
shall call to the heavens from above, and to 
the earth, that he may judge his people. 
Gather my saints together unto me, those 
that have made a covenant with me by sac- 
rifice. And the heavens shall declare his 
righteousness, for God is judge himself." J 
He issues his summons to the inhabitants 
of heaven and earth to witness the solemn 
scene, that the heavens may declare his right- 
eousness. Accordingly, we read that "when 
the Son of man shall come in his glory," the 
holy angels shall come with him, to witness 
* Eph. iii. 9-11. f 1 Pet. i. 12. J Ps. 1. -1-6. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



165 



the final adjudication.* And Paul tells us 
that he "shall be revealed from heaven with 
his mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking 
vengeance on them that know not God, and 
that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus 
Christ/' and that u he shall come to be glori- 
fied in his saints, and to be admired in all 
them that believe." f 

Iu no part of the Scriptures do we find 
the absurd idea that the general judgment 
is designed to enable God to determine the 
characters of men, or even to enable men to 
know their own characters. It is designed 
to vindicate the divine administration, and 
to make known to the intelligent universe 
the manifold wisdom of God in the plan of 
salvation. The doctrine of a general judg- 
ment, therefore, affords not the slightest evi- 
dence of the mortality of the soul. 

A third argument, drawn from these two 
doctrines, and much insisted on, is that it is 
at the resurrection, not before, that the saints 
* Matt, xxv. 31, 32. f 2 Thess. I 7-10. 



166 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



are to receive their reward. For example, 
these who are kind to the poor are to be 
recompensed "at the resurrection of the just. " 
Again, " And when the chief Shepherd shall 
appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that 
fadeth not away." Xow, it is true that the 
saints of God are taught to look to the morn- 
ing of the resurrection as the period when, 
by the deliverance of their bodies from death, 
their redemption will be completed; and it is 
true that it is when the whole man, soul and 
body, shall stand before God, that Jesus Christ 
will acknowledge his redeemed ones before 
his Father and the holy angels, and bestow 
upon them their full reward. That will be 
their coronation day. But to infer from all 
this that between death and the resurrection 
the soul is in an unconscious state is most 
illogical. The purposes to be answered by 
the general judgment, as already explained, 
require that the day of judgment should be 
the period when the reward of the righteous 



IMMORTALITY OP THE SOUL. 167 



will be announced and the sentence- of the 
wicked proclaimed. 

That the soul dies with the body is de- 
monstrated, it is said, because Paul " declares 
that unless he (man) comes forth again from 
the grave he is perished, that is the end of 
him, he is irrecoverably and for ever gone." 
But the apostle says no such thing. He is 
proving the fact that Christ is risen from 
the dead, and he argues thus : " For if the 
dead rise not, then is not Christ raised, and 
if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain, ye 
are yet in your sins. Then they also which 
are fallen asleep in Christ are perished." * 
The argument is this : All men are sinners, 
and therefore they are under the curse of the 
broken law. ISTow, if Christ is not risen, this 
fact proves that he is not the Saviour of men. 
Consequently, his disciples are yet in their 
sins, their faith being vain, and those of 
them who have died, died in their sins, and 
have perished under the curse. But the ob- 
* 1 Cor. xv. 16-18. 



168 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 

jector assumes that the word "perished" 
means annihilation; for if it means, as gene- 
rally understood, endless punishment, it af- 
fords no evidence whatever in favor of the 
mortality of the soul. One of the ablest 
living critics explains the apostle's language 
thus : " Perdition, according to Scripture, is 
not annihilation, but everlasting misery and 
sin. It is the loss of holiness and happiness 
for ever. If Christ did not rise for the 
justification of those who died in him, they 
found no advocate at the bar of God, and 
have incurred the fate of those who perish 
in their sins." * The meaning of this im- 
portant word [perished) will be carefully con- 
sidered in the course of this discussion. 

One of the most plausible arguments for 
the mortality of the soul is an inference from 
the language of Paul to the Thessalonians : 
"But I would not have you to be ignorant, 
brethren, concerning them which are asleep, 
that ye sorrow not, even as others which 
* Dr. Hodge in loco. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 169 



have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus 
died and rose again, even so them also which 
sleep in Jesus will God bring with him." * 
Paul, it is urged, comforted the Thessalonian 
Christians, not with the assurance that their 
deceased friends were already in heaven, but 
that they would rise from the dead, and then 
be for ever with the Lord. But "popular 
ministers," it is said, do not comfort mourn- 
ers in this way, but by telling them their 
friends are now in glory. The inference is 
that Paul did not believe that deceased Chris- 
tians do enjoy a happy existence before the 
resurrection. To all of which we answer : 

1. That we never find the inspired writers 
comforting believers, as do the annihilation- 
ists, by assuring them that to their deceased 
friends and to themselves the interval between 
death and the resurrection, however long it 
may really be, will appear but a moment. 
Xow, if the inference is legitimate that they 
did not believe what is called " the popular 
* 1 Thess. iv. 13, 14. 



170 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



doctrine" because they did not comfort 
mourners in the way adopted by " the popu- 
lar preachers/' may we not as justly conclude 
that they did not believe the annihilationist 
doctrine because they did not comfort mourn- 
ers as do annihilationists ? Wise men never 
employ arguments against the faith of others 
which are fatal to their own. 

2. In the apostolic age the two doctrines, 
the immortality of the soul and the resur- 
rection, were close companions. There were, 
indeed, those amongst the Gentiles who knew 
nothing of the resurrection who believed the 
soul immortal, for the doctrine of the resur- 
rection is purely a doctrine of Revelation, 
but we know of none who believed the doc- 
trine of the resurrection of the body who 
denied the immortality of the soul. " For," 
says Luke, u the Sadducees say that there is 
no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit, but 
the Pharisees confess both." * Each of these 
Jewish sects was consistent with itself. Trie 
* Acts xxiii. 8. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 171 



Sadducees were materialists. Deriving the 
immortality of the soul, they also denied the 
resurrection of the body, and they likewise 
denied the existence of disembodied spirits. 
The Pharisees, holding to the immortality of 
the soul, believed also the resurrection of the 
body, and they admitted the existence of 
spirits. Annihilationists are chargeable with 
the inconsistency of attempting to separate 
these kindred doctrines. 

Such being the forms of religious belief 
in the days of Christ and his apostles, it 
is evident that when the doctrine of the 
resurrection was proved the doctrine of 
the immortality of the soul followed of 
course. 

And now we can see the force of our 
Lord's refutation of the Sadducees : " But as 
touching the resurrection of the dead, have 
ye not read that which was spoken unto you 
by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, 
and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob ? 
God is not the God of the dead, but of the 

15 



172 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



living." * This argument demonstrated that, 
though the bodies of Abraham, Isaac and 
Jacob had long been dead, they themselves 
were living. It put the Sadducees to silence. 
Why? They denied two great doctrines of 
Revelation, viz. : the immortality of the soul 
and the resurrection of the body, and their 
rejection of the latter doctrine was a conse- 
quence of their disbelief of the former. Jesus 
Christ knew this, and therefore he struck at 
the proton pseudos — the radical error. He 
knew that if they were convinced of the 
immortality of the soul, they would find no 
difficulty in admitting the resurrection of the 
dead. He therefore demonstrated the im- 
mortality of the soul by proving that Abra- 
ham, Isaac and Jacob were yet alive. Thus 
the conclusiveness of his argument is clear, 
and we are not under the necessity, as the 
annihilationists are, of forcing upon his lan- 
guage a most unnatural meaning, viz. : that 
God is the God of those who are dead, but 
* Man. xxii. 31, 32. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 173 



not the God of " those who are irrecoverably 
and eternally dead" 

Now, then, we can see why Paul comforted 
believers concerning their departed friends by 
pointing them to the resurrection, for this 
doctrine implied the immortality of the soul. 
No one who believed the former doctrine 
denied the latter. If those who had fallen 
asleep in Christ were to rise again, it fol- 
lowed that their souls were now happy with 
him. The apostle, therefore, fixed their minds 
upon the completion of their redemption, 
the final triumph, when the whole redeemed 
family, those who had died and those who 
would be alive at the resurrection, would 
ascend together and be for ever with the 
Lord. The inference, therefore, that the 
apostle held that the soul dies with the body 
is wholly unwarranted. 



CHAPTEE VII. 



THE FIXAL DESTINY OF THE WICKED. 

TTHAT do the Scriptures teach respecting 



" ' the final destiny of the wicked ? 
We now come to the last question pro- 
posed for discussion. On two points the 
annihilationists agree with us, viz. : 1. That 
the wicked as well as the righteous will be 
raised from the dead. 2. That after being 
raised the righteous will receive their reward 
and the wicked will endure the penalty due 
to their sins. But they maintain what we 
deny — that the punishment of the wicked 
will be annihilation, or will end in anni- 
hilation. 

That "the wages of sin is death " Paul 
distinctly teaches.* "Whether death means 




* Eom. vi. 23. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 175 



the extinction of being, or the extinction of hope 
and consequent endless suffering, is the ques- 
tion to be determined. This has been a fruit- 
ful theme for abstract reasoning and specula- 
tion, respecting which we may say, as Gibbon 
says of the speculations of pagan philosophers 
concerning the divine nature, that "in the 
profound inquiry they displayed the strength 
and the weakness of the human understand- 
ing." The divine purposes concerning the 
righteous and the wicked involve questions 
too high and too deep for human reason, and, 
with infinite interests at stake, we desire to 
plant our feet on a more solid foundation. 
Let us, therefore, come directly to the light 
of God's word, without wearying our minds 
with the speculations, more or less plausible, 
by which men have undertaken to prove 
that moral evil must or must not continue 
for ever. 

In the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew we 
have presented before us by Christ himself 
a panoramic view of the general judgment, 

15* 



176 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



and there we learn, in language remarkably 
clear, what is to be the destiny both of the 
righteous and of the wicked. The Son of 
man is to come in his glory, and all the 
holy angels with him. All nations are to 
be gathered before him, and he will separate 
them from each other as a shepherd divideth 
the sheep from the goats. To the righteous 
he will say, " Come, ye blessed of my Father, 
inherit the kingdom prepared for you from 
the foundation of the w^orld." To the wicked 
he will say, " Depart from me, ye cursed, into 
everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and 
his angels." The final result is announced 
thus: "And these shall go away into ever- 
lasting punishment, but the righteous into 
life eternal." 

The question respecting the destiny of the 
wicked, so far as this passage is concerned, 
turns upon the two words, " everlasting pun- 
ishment." With Universalists the contro- 
versy relates to the meaning of the w T ord 
everlasting. They contend for a limited mean- 



IMMOETALITY OF THE SOUL. 177 



ing. Hudson and other annihilationist writers 
"waive all argument in behalf of a limited 
sense of the word 6 everlasting/ " though they 
do not fail to tell us that "a very strong 
case could be made out for such a sense." * 
No one denies that the word here translated 
everlasting is sometimes used to signify a 
limited period, but such a meaning can be 
forced on the w r ord here only by the utter 
disregard of the rules of language. The same 
Greek word which expresses the duration of 
the life of the righteous expresses the dura- 
tion of the punishment of the wicked. If, 
then, the former is unlimited, so is the 
latter. 

But annihilationists join issue on the word 
punishment, and the question they raise is 
this : " Does it necessarily denote conscious 
pain?" They insist that it means nothing 
more than " eternal privation of being," or 
annihilation. " The difficulty, we apprehend," 
says one of them, " arises from confounding 
*"Debt and Grace," p. 187. 



178 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



punishment with conscious suffering, whereas 
it is not necessarily such. Mark where the 
antithesis occurs : it is between life and pun- 
ishment. . . . AVe therefore plead for the 
plain and literal import of the terms. Life, 
then, means life, and life here is just the op- 
posite of the punishment brought to view." * 
Another writer adopts a different exposition. 
All those in the scene, he thinks, "are pro- 
fessed Christians — the true and the false, the 
genuine and the hypocrites. They are to- 
gether called c all the nations/ These words 
are not intended to mean all mankind, but 
are designed to be commensurate with the 
words in the apostolic commission, ( Go ye, 
therefore, and disciple all nations/" Thus 
he disposes of the phrase, " all nations." The 
ideal meaning of the word kolasin, translated 
punishment, he further informs us, " is to take 
from, to cut off, and hence to prune or to 
cut off unfruitful or worthless branches from 
a tree which is itself a good tree. And 
* " Mortal or Immortal," p. 94. 



IMMOETALITY OF THE SOUL. 179 



Jcolazo is the Greek equivalent of the He- 
brew kah-eath, which means to cut off 
as a branch is cut off, and to cut off by 
death, and is used when it is said, 'That 
soul shall be cut off/ 6 that soul shall be cut 
off from Israel/ Even so the false Christians 
shall be cut off from the flock of Christ, and 
from every pretence to the kingdom, of which 
they were ostensible heirs, in common with the 
true, and their excision shall not be temporal, 
but shall be eternal" * 

These writers give us two interpretations 
of this important passage. The one makes 
the word translated punishment mean excision, 
the others make it mean privation. Let us 
examine both of these interpretations. 

That the word does not mean excision, or 
the separation of hypocrites from true be- 
lievers, is clear from several considerations. 

1. It requires a most extraordinary and 
arbitrary interpretation of the phrase, "all 
nations," This phrase is indeed " commen- 
* " Quest, of Ages," p. 98. 



180 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 

surate with the words in the apostolic com- 
mission." But those words mean the same 
as those recorded by Mark : " Go ye into all 
the world, and preach the gospel to every 
creature." The commission embraces all the 
world, and so will the general judgment. To 
make the phrase, "all nations," mean only 
the professing Christians of all nations is a 
most unwarrantable perversion of language. 

2. If we were to admit that the word 
translated punishment sometimes means ex- 
cision, it is clear that such is not its mean- 
ing in the passage under consideration. For 
although we constantly meet, in the Old Tes- 
tament, with such expressions as, To be cut off 
from my people, yet in no instance is it said 
that offenders shall go away into excision. 
Xor would the expression, eternal excision, 
be less extraordinary. No writer would em- 
ploy such expressions to signify the separation 
of unworthy persons from the church. It is 
not only an incorrect, but a ridiculous, use of 
language. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 181 



3. The word kolasin never has tire mean- 
ing which this writer attaches to it. The 
verb holazo sometimes signifies to prune; and 
if the church were spoken of, in this view of 
the general judgment, as a tree, there might 
be some appearance of propriety in resorting 
to this meaning. But the scene presented is 
that of a king on his throne, summoning 
before him his subjects that he may suitably 
reward the faithful and inflict merited pun- 
ishment upon the rebellious. In such a con- 
nection no one would think of using a word 
signifying pruning. There w r ould be as much 
propriety in talking of the pruning or exci- 
sion of a criminal in court. Dr. Morris tells 
us that holazo is the Greek equivalent of the 
Hebrew kah-eath, which is used when it 
is said, "That soul shall be cut off." But 
the conclusive proof that this statement is 
incorrect is the fact, which he should have 
known, that, often as this expression occurs 
in the law of Moses, the Hebrew word kah- 
rath is never translated in the Septuagint 



182 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



by the Greek Jcolazo. If the latter were the 
equivalent of the former, why was it never 
used as the translation of it ? 

4. The constant and the uniform usage of 
the word kclasin proves that it signifies pun- 
ishment in the proper sense of the word. 
Hudson, after quoting a number of passages 
in the Old Testament and in the Apocryphal 
books in which this word occurs, remarks : 
" The ethical sense of ' punishment/ as dis- 
tinct from calamity or mere excision, is ap- 
parent in all the passages. The same is true 
of its usage in the New Testament." The 
verb Icolazo occurs in Acts iv. 21, where it is 
said, the Jewish council, after threatening the 
apostles, let them go, " finding nothing how 
they might punish (Jcolasontai) them." It oc- 
curs again in 2 Pet. ii. 9, where it is said, the 
Lord knoweth how to reserve "the unjust 
unto the day of judgment to be punished 
(kolazomenous)." The noun kolasis occurs in 
1 John iv. 18, where it is translated torment, 
and signifies that suffering which is caused 



niMOETALITY OF THE SOUL. 183 



by guilry fear. The usage of the word, then, 
shows the correctness of our translation. The 
word means punishment. The context proves 
the same theory. The glorious King comes to 
judge and reward his subjects. In order to 
this, he divides them into two classes, ac- 
cording to their characters. The righteous 
he rewards, the wicked he punishes. And 
what else can be intended by the sentence, 
" Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting 
fire, prepared for the devil and his angels w ? 
What is the meaning of " everlasting fire" ? 

There remains but one more question to be 
determined in relation to this important pas- 
sage, viz. : Whether the punishment consists 
in endless suffering, or in annihilation. It is 
said, the punishment is the antithesis of life, 
and therefore must be understood to be anni- 
hilation. This might be true if the word 
life here signified merely conscious existence. 
In that case the antithesis w^ould be non- 
existence or annihilation. But the word life 
is evidently here used, as constantly in the 

16 



184 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



New Testament, in the sense of holy and 
happy existence. The language of our Lord 
in John v. 24 makes the meaning clear : 
"Verily I say unto you, He that heareth my 
word, and beiieveth on Him that sent me, 
hath everlasting life, and shall not come into 
condemnation, but is passed from death unto 
life." When it is said of the believer that 
he is passed from death unto life, the meaning 
is not that he has passed from non-existence 
to conscious existence, but from a state of sin 
and condemnation to a holy, justified state. 
He has entered upon a holy and happy life 
which shall be endless. If, then, the eternal 
life of the righteous is to be a holy and happy 
existence, the antithesis of this would be, not 
annihilation, but a sinful, unhappy existence. 

This meaning of the word kolasin is re- 
quired by the word everlasting, which qualifies 
it. Doubtless, God, if he chose, could with 
infinite ease annihilate the wicked on account 
of their sins, and annihilation, inflicted on 
an immortal being, would certainly be a pun- 



IMMOKTALITY OF THE SOUL, 



185 



ishment, but in no possible sense could it be 
everlasting. Punishment^ whether it be of 
the nature of privation or of positive suffer- 
ing, can be inflicted only on a being who is 
conscious of it, and it requires no argument 
to prove that it cannot continue after the 
subject of it has ceased to exist. To say 
that it can is to maintain the possibility of 
punishing nothing, which is absurd. Still 
clearer, if possible, is it that annihilation, 
inflicted upon a mortal being, could not be 
everlasting punishment, for it could only 
hasten an event which must occur in the 
course of nature. Consequently, it could only 
deprive him of a limited, not an everlasting, 
existence. The fact that immortality was 
offered to him, but not accepted, does not 
alter the case, for since he never possessed 
immortality, he could not be deprived of it. 

The conclusive evidence that we have given 
to the phrase " everlasting punishment" its 
true meaning is the fact that it must have 
been so understood by those to whom our 



186 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



Lord was speaking. Amongst the Jews there 
were but two views respecting the future state, 
the one held b} 7 the Sadducees, the other by 
the Pharisees. The Sadducees, as we learn 
from both Josephus and the New Testament, 
believed that the souls of men die with their 
bodies, and they rejected the doctrine of the 
resurrection. They were, therefore, annihila- 
tionists, though differing materially from those 
of our day. The Pharisees believed in the 
immortality of the soul, in the resurrection 
of the just and the unjust, and in the endless 
punishment of the wicked. "They also be- 
lieve," says Josephus, "that souls have an 
immortal vigor in them, and that under the 
earth there will be rewards or punishments, 
according as they have lived virtuously or 
viciously in this life, and the latter are to be 
detained in an everlasting prison," etc. "When, 
therefore, our Lord spoke of everlasting pun- 
ishment to be inflicted on the wicked after 
the resurrection, his disciples, unless informed 
to the contrary, must have understood him 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 187 



to teach the doctrine held by all -the Jews 
except the Saddueees. If the modern doc- 
trine of the annihilation of the wicked at a 
period succeeding the resurrection had ever- 
been known amongst the Jews, it had cer- 
tainly disappeared before the advent of Christ. 
If, therefore, he had designed to teach it, and 
to correct the prevailing belief, he most cer- 
tainly would not have employed language 
so likely to confirm the existing faith, and 
which, on this supposition, has misled ninety- 
nine hundredths of the readers of the New 
Testament from that day to this. 

That the punishment of the wicked will 
not be merely that of privation, " cutting off 
from life," but positive suffering, we are dis- 
tinctly taught by the Apostle Paul. After 
saying that God " will render to every man 
according to his deeds" at the day of judg- 
ment, he thus describes the destiny of the 
righteous and of the wicked respectively : 
" To them who by patient continuance in 
well-doing seek for glory and honor and 

16* 



188 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



immortality, eternal life; but unto them that 
are contentious, and do not obey the truth, 
but obey unrighteousness, indignation and 
wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every 
soul that cloeth evil." * The doom of the 
wicked is to be the suffering; of the indigna- 
tion and wrath of God, inflicting tribulation 
and anguish. It is certain that these words, 
" tribulation and anguish," do express posi- 
tive suffering. This the apostle declares to 
be the penalty the wicked shall suffer, but 
not the slightest intimation does he give 
either that the penalty is the privation of 
conscious existence or that it will terminate 
in this. But as he is here expressly teaching 
what is the penalty of sin, he could not have 
failed to speak of annihilation if this had 
been the penalty. 

This doctrine is further proved by our 
Saviour's language in John iii. 36: "He 
that believeth on the Son hath everlasting 
life, and he that believeth not on the Son 
* Eom. ii. 7-10. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 189 



shall not see life, but the wrath of God 
abideth on him." Believers now possess and 
shall enjoy eternal life — a life of holiness and 
bliss — but unbelievers not only shall not enjoy 
eternal life, but instead of this, the wrath of 
God shall abide on them. Now, it is certain 
that the wrath of God cannot abide on noth- 
ing ; it cannot, therefore, abide on beings who 
no longer exist. Most certainly, then, the 
wicked will continue to exist and to suffer 
under the divine displeasure. But says Hud- 
son, " The state of death was deemed by the 
Jews an evil. And by a natural dramatism, 
the subtlety of thoughts ever transcending 
the subtlety of words, such a destiny might 
be expressed in language which, grammati- 
cally taken, implies existence." He acknow- 
ledges that our Lord's language, grammati- 
cally taken, implies the continued existence 
of the wicked ; how, then, is the language to 
be made to convey a meaning directly the 
reverse of its plain, grammatical meaning? 
Interpreted according to the established prin- 



190 IMMOETALITY OF THE SOUL. 



ciples of language, it confessedly teaches the 
continued existence of the wicked; but we 
are to imagine a fiction called "a natural 
dramatisni," and to suppose that the subtlety 
of the thoughts which our Lord was endeavor- 
ing to communicate transcends the subtlety of 
his language, and then we may suppose that 
he meant just the reverse of that which he 
said ! He said the wicked continue to exist : 
he meant that they cease to exist ! In the 
hands of such critics language ceases to be 
the medium of ideas, and becomes a mere 
plaything. These gentlemen find no diffi- 
culty in giving expression to their faith in 
plain, unambiguous language. Could not our 
Saviour do the same ? 

The doctrine of the endless punishment of 
the wicked is further confirmed by the pun- 
ishment denounced against blasphemy against 
the Holy Spirit: "But he that shall blas- 
pheme against the Holy Ghost hath never 
forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal dam- 
nation." This, we are told, means "a judg- 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 191 



ment or condemnation, the effects -of which 
will be eternal." Agreed. But what are the 
effects of condemnation ? They are the suffer- 
ings to which the criminals are condemned, 
and, therefore, eternal condemnation must 
mean endless sufferings. Thus " eternal sal- 
vation" (Heb. v. 9) is a salvation the happy 
effects of which are to be eternally experi- 
enced by its subjects. " Eternal redemption" 
(Heb. ix. 12) is a redemption the blissful 
fruits of which are to be for ever enjoyed. 
"The everlasting gospel" (Rev. xiv. 6) is a 
gospel whose blessings are to be for ever pos- 
sessed. A "perpetual covenant" (Ex. xxxi. 
16) is a covenant designed to be perpetually 
in force. Such is the uniform usage of the 
Scriptures. The penalty of sin might have 
been annihilation, but in no possible sense 
could such a sentence be called an eternal 
condemnation. One might as well speak of 
a stroke of lightning as continuing half a 
century, because it killed a child that might 
have lived fifty years, as of an eternal con- 



192 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



demnation to annihilation. Such language is 
not merely extraordinary, it is unheard of. 

There are many other passages of Scrip- 
ture that might be cited in refutation of the 
doctrine of the annihilation of the wicked. 
Perhaps some passages to which we have not 
referred may be thought to present evidence 
quite as strong as those we have quoted. 
But we are willing to close the argument at 
this point, for we are persuaded that the 
evidence we have adduced is abundantly 
sufficient to satisfy the unprejudiced, and we 
know full well that no language, however 
clear or strong, can convince those whose 
minds are blinded by prejudice. 

The great question, then, which God has 
submitted to men, is not whether they will 
continue to live or cease to exist, but whether 
their future life shall be holy and happy or 
sinful and wretched. Depraved and degraded 
men may say, " Let us eat and drink, for to- 
morrow we die." Or in the vain effort to escape 
from the wretchedness which their sins have 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 193 



brought upon them they may commit suicide, 
as so many are doing. But the Creator has 
imparted to the soul a life which is inde- 
structible. If, as our Saviour declared, the 
murderer who kills his victim cannot kill 
his soul, neither can the suicide destroy its 
life. It is a glorious and a fearful truth 
that every human being has entered upon 
an existence which is destined to run parallel 
with that of God, and through the endless 
ages every one must glorify the grace or the 
justice of God. We must act, then, under 
the pressure of eternal motives; and the ques- 
tion we are settling is, whether we will lay 
up treasure in heaven, or treasure up wrath 
against the day of wrath. We are obliged 
to live, form character and receive reward. 
What character we will form, and what shall 
be our reward, are the questions we are now 
settling. May God give us wisdom to 
choose ! 

The doctrine we have now proved is full 
of consolation and joy to the children of 



194 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



God. They are no mere material organ- 
isms governed by material laws, incapable 
alike of virtue or vice, but spirits possessed 
of free moral agency, capable of bearing the 
image of their glorious Creator. This short 
life is not to be followed by a long, dreary 
night of unconsciousness, but the putting off 
their frail tabernacle will introduce them im- 
mediately into the presence of their Saviour, 
and into the bliss of heaven. " And I heard 
a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, 
Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord 
from henceforth : yea, saith the Spirit, that 
they may rest from their labors ; and their 
works do follow them/' Rev. xiv. 13. 



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